Posts by herberts ghost

AWS outage exposes Achilles heel: central control plane

This points to the fundamental issue with cloud computing and "centralization"

Cloud computing only increases your security attack surface. This of a wall of brains ... it only takes a cloud vendor's Igor the mess things up. You are still exposed to your error and have added the vendors (even thou they are generally very good. Another risk, though not in play today, is vendor lock in, don't use proprietary tools unless you have to and if you must ... do not use the cloud vendors or you have made them a monopoly.

Centralization is another issue because AWS is so large that the likelihood that sites that you depend on use AWS is high. So if AWS gets sick, it affects a lot of sites and services at once. Detecting the true cause may be hard to deduce.

Many employees are using AI to create 'workslop,' Stanford study says

My graduate work in the 70s was in programming proofs of correctness (Classes from Dijkstra and the like. One of the obstacles to proving complex programs correct was the specification problem". That is our inability to write a detailed and correct specification of what a complex problem is to do. Well you need exactly that to even give an AI a chance to succeed. Todays Agile programming software engineering problem is a monument to this inability.

Ruh-roh. DDR5 memory vulnerable to new Rowhammer attack

There are statistical means to inform refresh in the absence of of row access counts

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/356694192_CN_Patent_CN104488031B_ROW_HAMMER_PERFORMING_REFRESH_OF_A_MEMORY_DEVICE_IN_RESPONSE_TO_ACCESS_OF_DATA

Oracle cuts cloud jobs with Seattle hit hard as AI spending soars

In for a penny, in for a pound

I never understood why you should want to put your critical data(base) in someone elses cloud. Just doubled your attack surface. Added to vendor lock-in. The cloud is viable for test and, in my case, models and stats crunching.

Why the UK public sector still creaks along on COBOL

A fools errand

So you want to replace a legacy code-base written in COBOL on mainframes. Lets us enumerate the problems.

1) You lost the specs for the code base long ago and have not updated the few specs you have as you changed the code base

2) You lost the test-base for the code base

3) Your code base uses other software ... databases ... coms ... that are not supported in Linux and not understood or used outside the mainframe world

4) All of the vendor support of its software moved to India

5) No sensible CS student would even want to take a class in COBOL and the other mainframe tools. Thus the non-sensible folks you hire to do the conversion are not top notch.

6} Mainframes are 100s of times faster than 20 years ago so speed and capacity is not an issue.

7) A code base that is 50 years old is likely almost bug free.

8) Don't rewrite what is slightly broke. Imagine all the bugs that have already been fixed.

9) Learn the lost art of system integration.

10) Government has the attention span of a gnat, so the is no realistic long term plan.

So you propose to rewrite the code base from scratch

A more realistic plan would be to stay on the mainframe and rewrite individual components and new components in a high level language.

Continue to run all code on on legacy systems until it all works, then and only then, move to your favorite platform. This ain't a HW issue.

Don''t replace a component unless it runs on a test system in parallel with the legacy code for two years yielding the exact same results.

Don't try to improve new code till it matched old code. The problem is not how much you are spending on HW.

Suetopia: Generative AI is a lawsuit waiting to happen to your business

And then there is patent infringement

If your team uses ai to design something (code, HW, ...) and your result infringes someone's patent you will have to prove that the AI was not trained on opensource copies of the patent. AI cannot be cross examined ... poor you ... triple damages.

Broadcom's answer to VMware pricing outrage: You're using it wrong

Nothing like using vendor packages to get locked in and price gouged forever.

The whole point of using a virtual machine (aka hypervisor) is to run YOUR system transparently, By not using a vendors (Amazon Broadcom ...) added frills you can move to a different hypervisor relatively easily.. Don't fall for the vendor "Bundles". Their aim is to make you dependent upon their mix and thus be able to raise their price at will. Don't be foolish.

'Copilot will remember key details about you' for a 'catered to you' experience

So "You can opt out of Personalization anytime"

Just because MS is offering the option not to personalize your UI does not mean that your opt out will stop them form still collecting personal info, or selling that info to third parties. Words mean things The Reg needs to ask follloup questions.

DeepSeek or DeepFake? Our vultures circle China's hottest AI

Anthropomorphizing AI

This video gives us an important observation. We are attributing human characteristics to AI. This is probably not wise. There is some amount of Dunning-Kruger cognitive bias is in all of us. We have to attempt to avoid anthropomorphizing AI and really be on the lookout for where and WHY it fails.

I wonder what Edsger Dijkstra would say about AI.

Security? We've heard of it: How Microsoft plans to better defend Windows

Has Microsoft fired its marketting department

You are unlikely to see better security without blood in marketing isles.

Qualcomm's Windows on Arm push would be great – if only it ran all your software

Agreed. Many of us have old code. I am not interested in gambling that my code will not run on an ARM windows box. For windows, I will continue to use x86 boxes, but will consider Linux boxes in the future. I would consider ARM of RISCV for Linux, ARMs business model ensures its loss to an free open architecture like RISCV eventually.

The hunt is on for the scum who stole Britain's largest inflatable planetarium

Look up

Maybe they just filled it with helium and it floated up ... up .. up ,, to get closer to the planets.

Hands up who hasn't made an offer to buy some part of Intel

Never eat something bigger than your head.

ARM proved to the world that CPU design is no longer a high art limited to a few gods. Now ARMs biggest threat is open source ... RISCV. ARM buying Intel is like one Rock tying itself to another rock to stay afloat.

AWS claims customers are packing bags and heading back on-prem

The cloud only increases your attack surface

NEVER Ever use a cloud vendors sw, Lock in is lock in. Once you are locked in you have no negotiation ability.

Systems are cheaper than ever. You can afford your local critical infrastructure.

you can even aford a remote hot site. AWS... get the hw cheaper but do not pass on the savings.

You can keep test ,,, and research in the cloud.

The cloud can only increase your security attack surface and offers many more attack vectors to security.

Maintain local backups that are offline to mitigate ransomware attacks. Backup the backups to the cloud.

CrowdStrike blames a test software bug for that giant global mess it made

Perhaps include some in-house Azure systems

Cloudstrike should host servers from Microsoft, AWS and othet cloud providers in their internal testing. E.g. disk drive vendors have array controllers from Netapp, Dell, HP, .. to test drive updates before they are unleashed upon those costomer's costomer's systems.

Also, auto- update is antithetical to reliability and security. Hanging back a day and listening for screams from early adopters is a good idea.

VMware license changes mean bare metal can make a comeback through 'devirtualization', says Gartner

The result of "over monetization of hypervisors" might be that CPU vendors may implement hardware partitioning of resouces on their sockets. This would be much like HP Superdome's partitioning of 64 socket systems into smaller isolated systems, each partition with its own memory, IO and cores.

Was there no one at Microsoft who looked at Recall and said: This really, really sucks

Name the engineers and executives.

How about starting to name the evil dummies that participate in these travesties, so they can receive the well deserved personal derision of their colleagues. This is the start of the privacy holocaust and credit need to be given where well deserved.

IBM and LzLabs to clash in UK court over Software Defined Mainframe

This same claim has been litigated by several other vendors IBM has always won.

Even if by some fluke LzLabs should win in Briton, IBM will go after every customer and certainly win in the US on patents. AMDAHL and HITACHI bought licenses.

Amazon Ring sounds death knell for surveillance as a service

You still cannot trust RING

They can still change their minds and there is no legal recourse. We need a surveillance service that is "zero knowledge" ... your videos are encrypted end to end without even RING being able to view them. Then , even if they turn over the files, the files are worthless.

We must defeat the survalence state.

Android VPNs to get audit badges in Google Play Store if they aren't comically crap

A Google security rating -- REALLY?

I note that as of this writing, they don't seem to certify NORTON or DuckDuckGo VPNs.

It may also certify that it does not interfere with googles tracking.

This may be like the NSA certifying an encryption scheme. (Yes we can break in, but it us too hard for amatures.)

Google "do evil!"?

King Charles III signs off on UK Online Safety Act, with unenforceable spying clause

I don't see how you would be able to have secure banking transactions across the pond when back-doors are mandated.

Online tracking is alive and well in link decoration

Re: Harmful aspects of Google link decoration.

Sorry the link is busted

Now IBM sued for age discrim by its own HR veterans

Seems Ironic

It is certainly ironic that HR types are filing suit against their employer after years of being complicit in the age discrimination conspiracy.

Also, Is it possible that wire fraud was also involved in the conspiracy to violate their employees constitutional rights.

It is certainly ironic that HR types are filing suit against their employer after years of HR types being complicit in the age discrimination conspiracy.

Also, Is it possible that wire fraud was also involved in the conspiracy to violate their employees constitutional rights.

Arm's lawyers want to check assembly expert's book for trademark missteps

Perhaps ARM should go after the NRA and the US Constitution

After all the terms "keep and bear arms", firearm, freedom of assembly ...

Power grid worries force Amazon to run Oregon datacenters using fuel cells

A complete waste of renewable energy

Also there are those who propose to dismantle some hydroelectric dams to help salmon.

The amazon data centers should have to use power.at the highest rates. ... let them generate their own power. Folks in Oregon and Idaho don't need computational carpetbaggers to use up our hydroelectric natural respuces.

Pakistan’s PM overturns Wikipedia ban, seeks end to whack-a-mole content blocks

Trying to Edit WIKIpeadia can be a fools errand.

The woke upper editors will undo your edits if it does not support their narrative. Even if it a factual correction. There is no way to apeal. That is why I will never give wikiipedia a dime

Trying to Edit WIKIpeadia can be a fools errand.

Yes.... you can try to edit an article, but there are SUPER EDITORS that review these edits

These editors are drawn from an elite WOKE cabal. They will undo your edit if it does not fit their WOKE narrative.

There is no effective way to appeal. I found this out by trying to correct a factual error on a WIKIpedia page. A wikipediitor overruled the edit.

Labyrinth of 371 legacy systems hindered hospital's IT meltdown recovery

Re: Incompetent IT leaders in GSTT

In most cases the cause of this type of outage is caused managerial incompetance. They chose short term savings at the expense of customer service. Failure to invest in system upgrade including power and air conditioning backup. What kind of moron puts the backup in the same city/power-grid as the primary?

These folks will often blame the legacy systems that they inherited. But mainframes (for instace) are 1000 times faster than they were in the 70s.

Children will say rewrite everything. The track record of conversions is terrible. The SW works but the specs are lost.

You were cheap/incompetant time to find another job.

Elon Musk to abused Twitter users: Your tormentors are coming back

Re: This reply so you can't moan about no reply for the downvote.

Most posts are single topic, it should be obvious that down vote indicates that people who down vote you don't agree with your assessment. Forums are not like an literature class where we all try to read between the lines and try to imagine what the author did not say. We do not need to provide you with a free public education. At the (low)risk of committing an inductive fallacy, I will ignore everything else you say..

Re: And to think that 30 years ago...

Why should anyone want to debate you. You seem to be in your own echochamber. YWhy bother.

GitHub's Copilot flies into its first open source copyright lawsuit

Machine cryptomnesia!

I can just see the AI under cross on the stand??? Oh wait ... I can't!

You can imagine the AI's creator being asked why it did whatever it did. Its like asking a dog trainer, why exactly did the dog bite the baby.?

One man's battle to get patent rights for AI inventors in America may be over

Re: when the AI can, without prompting...

When AI can be deposed on the witness stand. When AI can address the areas of Cryptomnesia (could it have seen an aspect of thie invention in its training data). Does the AI even know what it invented. Did it review the claims and can it swear that it invented them.

AI is like a wrench or hammer. I has no idea what it is doing. In criminal law who can attest that the AI actually did this. It is like deposing a dog. Why did you bite the baby doggy? The people who wrote the AI can only attest to training data and test data. They don't know the thought process, other than statistics.

Your AI-generated digital artwork may not be protected by US copyright

You can't cross examine AI

Thus you cannot question the thought process by which it invented or created something. Training data is third party. Who can say what training data is not disclosed. If the AI lies what sanctions can be brought to bear. Someone used the tool (AI) to come up with the invention or work of art is it not them that recognized the invention. For patents who draws up the claims. Who swears that they authored the claims.

Why you should start paying attention to CXL now

Sorta sounds like Superdome

One piece of data lacking is latency. If this technology were to be udse for a database or similar application, what would be the implication of locking in a remote CXL node.High remote memory latency could cause a number of problems, How many parallel threads can I run before I am in lock hell. Processors typically have a fixed number of queue slots for outgoing writes. What is are the implication of this when the targets are in high latency CXL. What is the situation of error detection and correction on these CXL paths. Is there support for chip kill and other technologies that have proven important fo large memory systems.

I suspect the success of CXL will be workload dependent.

Hubble Space Telescope may now depend on a computer that hasn't booted since 2009

Radiation effects systems that are off.

One problem is that the components of the backup computer have been exposed to roughly the same radiation levels as the primary computer. Damage can occur when the system is powered off (as people who depend upon Flash drives for long term backup will likely find out.

‘Radiation upset’ confused computers, caused false alarm on International Space Station

We had computers in Leadville, CO (10,152 ft). Terrible problems with soft errors. In Leadville you need to place your datacenter under 10 feet of water to get the same shielding provided by the atmosphere at sea level.

OVH reveals it's scrubbing servers – to get smoke residue off before rebooting

Re: Magnetic drives (except for He filled) have vent holes

Except for helium filled drives, magnetic drives have vent holes to equalize the atmospheric pressure. If the drive comes up, replace it soon. Any prior reliability stats are void. Smoke can harm lubricants used in spindle and arm, Also interact with lubricants used on the disk surface. We won't even talk about heads.

Florida man won't be compelled to reveal iPhone passcode, yet

What if your pass-code is a confession in itself or leads to evidence against you.

Examples: IAmGuiltyOfDrivingWhileTesting

Used to be this would have been good in the US.

"I shipped PGP to France" - It was ileagal to ship encryption SW overseas and against the Law in France to import" The US Judge cannot grant immunity for an offshore crime.

‘Artificial Intelligence’ was 2016's fake news

Best avoid the need for a Butlerian Jihad in the first place

Read Dune