Posts by DuncanLarge

Windows 10 ends the year with more than half of PCs on a 2020 flavour

Re: Consumer versions

> I don't think it's wrong for Microsoft to use their own browser to display system state information and documentation.

Tell that to the international courts that punished Microsoft when they did this with internet explorer.

Re: Consumer versions

I'm glad I only boot win 10 every month or so when I want to play a Windows game. I've been on Debian for years.

Explained: The thinking behind the 32GB Windows Format limit on FAT32

Re: Whaddabout CDs?

> Must have interesting authoring a 650MB CD in the early 1980's...

You didn't. Orange book did not come out till 1990 and even though CD-R like burners existed in 1988 they were washing machine sized and cost $35,000.

It wasn't till 1995 that CD burners came about that were less than $1000 and by then we were starting to get win 95.

As far as authoring a CD-DA disc, well you stored the data on video tape as digital signals, much like barcodes. As the machines were used in NTSC and PAL regions it was found that a sample rate of 44,100Hz would work with both standards. This is why CD audio is 44.1kHz and not 48kHz as originally intended.

Didn't matter, 44,100 Hz, 16 bit still allowed perfect reproduction of the original signal, shame about audiophiles who think that hi-rez is worth it (beyond getting an unabused VERSION of a recording, they won't give you that on CD because they want to cheat you).

Re: What about FAT file transfer?

Yes, I never thought about that.

These days burning while mastering is the norm, even for BD-r.

New year, new rant: Linus Torvalds rails at Intel for 'killing' the ECC industry

Re: Don't forget the “Tech Press”

> every moron has a PC with 16 GB RAM

Mines 12, and before I upgraded to a new machine I had 8.

> SmartPhones come with 12 GB of RAM

Sure they do. You must be thinking of the overpriced flagships. Mine phone and tablet has 2GB. I have 16GB of storage, of which I can use about 4 if I have nothing installed.

Re: Memory Compression?

Do your research, memory compression is used to COMPRESS the contents of RAM.

It has been in kernel 3.14 and is used by Android 4.4 and above. Win 10 does it too.

Re: Who is this "Intel" ?

> There's probably some emulators running FORTRAN on VMS somewhere in NASA as well, to give the maintainers a sandbox.

It annoys me when people use their imagination to fill in the blanks, lol thinking that Fortran is so old you need a VMS emulator.

Well the truth is that Fortran 2018 is the latest version, it integrates with .Net and C, compiles to portable code and although not the most popular language is still used extensively in scientific circles.

Presumably your point was NASA would have an emulator for old versions of hardware like the Voyager probes. Maybe they do, can't think why. Those probes are way too far away to patch. As for NASA and development hardware, well they usually just chuck the stuff in the tip when the project ends.

https://ourcodingclub.github.io/tutorials/fortran-intro/

Re: Who is this "Intel" ?

> Most of the world does not use a desktop

Citation needed, but going with the assumption I suspect most of the world is indeed using laptops, the vast majority of which are based on x86-64 mostly using intel chips.

Oh you were thinking of tablets? Yeah some people may do banking on those when they are in bed or caught short in the shop, so they need ECC too.

> I bet there are still machines running FORTRAN on VMS in some corner of NASA.

Why would they need that? Fortran 2018 is the latest version and integrates with .Net

X.Org is now pretty much an ex-org: Maintainer declares the open-source windowing system largely abandoned

> RDP is a little better across the network

How? Last time I used RDP I had a full desktop with notifications and scrollbars because it couldnt fit on my monitor. All I needed to do was add a machine to DNS, RSAT tools was broken on my laptop for some reason and I probably could have used powershell. It would have been nice to simply launch the DNS dialog on the Domain Controller and have it work as a normal window on my machine. But no, I had to have a HUGE RDP window and wait for RDP to log me in.

Re: The power of open-source

> I like to think of that "ancient cruft" as "well tested bug-free code".

Totally agree.

Besides security issues that come along and need patching, code does not degrade with age and so "ancient cruft" is a newbie coders way of saying "I dont want to learn how it works because its hard getting up to speed so I will just write my own version that breaks all the cool stuff and implements only 50% of the original features because thats all thats needed to run Steam, then find ways to force everyone to use that while convincing everyone that its progressive.

There is a case for chucking everything out and starting from scratch, feature for feature.

There is a case for deciding if a bit of functionality SHOULD be in this code or outside. This is part of the Unix design philosophy where you can strip out features into their own programs thus making everything simpler and more modular. Does wayland have this? A Wayland Networking daemon that gets started on demand when networking comes into play? It could allow anything from single windows to whole desktop networking (basically a whole X session over the network) and can leverage another program to set up encrypted tunnels. Nope, that doesnt run steam so nope. All it needs to be is a proxy, forwarding Wayland events to and from each systems compositors. The compositor need not care that its over a network, just serve the standard wayland protocol.

"Ancient cruft" that may actually be there is most likely hacks put in to work around an issue with hardware that nobody uses anymore, even Linux has that.

Re: The power of open-source

> Linus took Unix

No, he didnt. That had been mostly done before he got involved so he only added a few bits and polished it off.

Re: Nobody likes X11

> Nobody likes X11

What ancient distro are you using?

My requirement

I dont mind using Wayland, well its just a protocol what I really mean is I dont mind using a wayland compositor as long as:

- That compositor never makes itself a requirement. Any application should be able to connect to it.

- It supports networking like X did but maybe in cooler ways.

The one thing I will hold on to X.Org for is to avoid stepping back into 2002 and having to use VNC just because I want to run a graphical program on a headless server or a VM.

What will you do with your Raspberry Pi 4 this week? RISC it for a biscuit perhaps?

Yay

All my Pi's run RISC OS. I also have a couple original machines (Risc PC 600 and a A3020).

On the PI you can write BBC BASIC programs, which includes an ARM assembler if you want to add machine code. The BBC BASIC is the latest version and can provide very low latency use of the GPIO pins.

Re: Zarch

Yes, but you need to run the archemedes emulator as the Pi CPU is incompatible

RIAA DMCAs GitHub into nuking popular YouTube video download tool, says it's used to slurp music

Re: Let's be honest

> Did the EFF's claim of, "a world of lawful usages," include any examples perhaps?

We dont have to tax our imagination too hard. Here are just a few examples of very commonly practiced reasons for downloading from youtube:

1. Your internet is crap most of the time but it gets better during the day when you are at work. When you get home, you can barely watch anything, caching all the time, kids screaming for bandwidth. Well, you have cron on your linux box run youtube-dl to download the latest vids from your subscriptions. Yes, many people have very slow internet, I still go to work with people who think having 1Mb/s is normal.

2. You wish to debunk some crap that some idiot said about 5G. You want to use the DCMA's own "fair use" exemptions to allow you to incorporate reasonable length segments of the offending video. Somehow you need to import it into your NLE. How????

3. The video is licensed under a CC license permitting redistribution and perhaps modification. I wonder how we can pull it out of youtube.

4. You are a datahoarder. You download everything, cant help it. Your kind will be the saviours of human culture after the zombie apocalypse.

5. You are downloading a public domain work.

6. You are downloading your own videos as the youtube method is now slow and inconvenient after their yearly UI update that everyone hates.

7. You are an archivist, see datahoarder only without the need to hoard.

Shall we do cars next? They are used to kill people, kidnap children and run drugs but I think we can find a few legitimate uses for a car, if we try really hard we may be able to keep using them dont your think?

US govt wins right to snaffle Edward Snowden's $5m+ book royalties, speech fees – and all future related earnings

Oh the irony

You get caught spying on an unsuspecting public, breaking laws some of which are hundreds of years old, while lying under oath that you are not doing it.

Then you use other laws to get paid for having done that very thing.

I bet none of this money will even make it into any charities or public projects. It'll find its way to "the right people".

Thunderbird implements PGP crypto feature requested 21 years ago

Re: Encryption should be automatic

Correct, the MITM has to hope you dont verify the key validity outside of that conversation too.

How the hell you got 5 downvotes just shows that hardly anyone seems to understand decades old technology!

Even those who know how TLS works should be able to understand a MITM attack.

Its very basic stuff.

Re: identity and encryption

> No, email is sent end to end, it passes through servers along the way.

That is incorrect.

Email is sent point to point. Usually each point is at each end but if there is a server in-between you, you are forwarding your email TO that server where that server will initiate a separate connection to move it onwards WHEN it decided to do so.

That means that the email may be stored on that server for later delivery.

That is not end to end.

Re: identity and encryption

> you don't need identify assurance beyond the email address

Because everyone is born with an email address tattoo on their foot?

There is nothing in an email address that goes anywhere to prove identity.

Anyone can create a key for any address, even the one you use. Once they make a key for that address and then get hold of your address due to your terrible password choice was leaked in a breach that matched the rainbow table they have for unsalted hashes of common words they can literally impersonate you and just have to blag about how your key has changed etc. Savvy GPG users will then contact you via other means to confirm they key, and if you use a keyserver will think something is up if you have not revoked the old key.

We've had public key crypto for decades its not that hard to understand.

Ultimately to prove identity is to meet each other face to face and exchange public keys, then sign them. At a key signing party. Unfortunately that is a barrier but that is the ONLY way to confirm beyond a doubt that it is YOU behind that address and if you do key signing correctly, behind ANY address and ANY key you sign.

The tech is sound, the web of trust is the problem as its not always used.

No other way exists to prove you own an email address. Not without confirming other factors or confirming you have access certain devices. I could email you a random string then call you and have you read that out, that would work. But nothing allows you to prove identity simply by giving the email address.

Re: identity and encryption

As long as you have backups of your home directory that includes the .gnupg directory you are fine as long as you dont forget your keys password.

Of course most people barely backup anything so I think your question is just one of many similar questions that people only read when they lose all their data and go to reddit to ask how to recover it off a dead hdd.

Re: identity and encryption

> will automatically be encrypted after the first email exchange.

That can be abused, also it wont be used as there are loads of email clients and you basically need this in all of them.

I use Signal on my mobile for sending SMS and if I even find someone in my contacts who uses Signal too I can send secure messages. However I doubt I will ever find another Signal user as everyone else is still using Whatsapp et-al, who also implemented the Signal protocol. ow if only we could trust they implemented the Signal protocol properly and honestly, then we could have Signal and Whatsapp interoperate.

That would be great.

> Without the need for a third party key holder

There is no third party key holder in PGP. Well there isnt the NEED for one. Put your public key on your website, attach it to your unencrypted emails. Anything will do. The savvy users will then confirm your key is valid while more trusting users will simply TOFU. The key servers are useful only if the owner of the keys bothers to use them, which is probably a good idea as it allows key revocation.

> I do not like third party key holders

There arent any, but yes I dont like them either. Keyservers are not key holders, well not how you think and they dont do any tracking (well they could track you based on browser fingerprint). What you are thinking of is key escrow, where you must give up your private key.

> I do not like any protocol with a "revoke"

Why? If my key has been compromised and I'm no longer in control of it then I most certainly want to tell anyone who is sending me encrypted stuff not to use that key. I also want to have those people know that the email I sent them could not have come from me as I revoked the key, so when "I'm" telling my stock broker to transfer all my shares to some guy in South Africa maybe they will think that its probably best to not do that. Or maybe "I" send my solicitor who has never seen my face a scan of my driving license for proving ID on a house purchase.

Unfortunately no solicitor I looked at when I bought a house in 2012 used PGP/GPG so I had to send a colour scan of my ID documents IN THE CLEAR FFS. I seriously would have preffered to FAX it. Oh well, my risk to take. And no, no encrypted zips either, I only fond out about that limitation while in the middle of exchanging contracts.

> Want to change your public key? Then change it. People you communicate with will get a big fat warning that something is wrong because the key has changed. That's as it should be!

Thats how it is.

Re: Encryption should be automatic

WTF are you on about?

The key servers are not involved in encrypting the message. They just let you find someones public key and there are plenty of other methods to do that!

One very modern method is to serve your keys via DNS.

The significant issue with public key crypto is the building of the "web of trust". Technically its optional as you can confirm the key fingerprint and mark the key as trusted yourself or you can opt for a TOFU (Trust On First Use) method which if you are careful to tick your specific boxes and not simply do it without caring should be adequate for most people / situations.

SSL sorted out the web of trust by implementing the third party infrastructure you seem to be thinking of. PGP doesnt have that, its totally independent and only as strong as those who use it incorrectly.

The Battle of Britain couldn't have been won without UK's homegrown tech innovations

Re: The war is over, the empire is gone

> while it's nice to believe that

:D "believe"

:D

Who needs to "believe"?

Infor pays UK construction retailer Travis Perkins £4.2m settlement following cancelled upgrade of 'Sellotape and elastic bands' ERP system

Been there

Infor were responsible for our System 21 AS400 ERP for many years.

When I joined the company and learned my way around the AS400 it was very clear that it was "sellotape and elestic bands". We essentially had two ERP systems, an ancient one and a half install of its replacement. Both systems had been left talking to each other via triggers. It worked fine till it didnt, then you'd have to jump through hoops trying to convince Infor that they had to fix it as they were being paid monthly to do just that. Most of the time we were sent links to knowledge base articles telling us how to do Infors job for them, links that were not relevant because we were in a no mans land of an old ERP half upgraded to another now old ERP replacement.

Once the system went down due to a UPS shutdown. The system didn't come back up at all, on a bank holiday where I was the only IT support all day. Could I call them? Everything was dead. NO reports had been generated, the delivery note printers wernt printing and lorries were stacking up at all the sites phoning me asking why the printers arnt working and why the AS400 screen was blank. Infor had no clue why, even though they were experts on AS400 they had no clue. We spent a week having them manually triggering jobs on the AS400 just to have us get by, invoices, EDI, report generation all of which should have been automatic were now manual. Till our AS400 guru came back off holiday and discovered that the issue was the UPS shutdown program cleared the AS400's startup program value to have the AS400 start in a restricted state. So called AS400 experts like Infor, seeing a system that no longer starts correctly might have checked that the startup program was set.

Oh and there was the time where I had them on to fix something for a user. The guy killed the interactive subsystem. For anyone who dont know AS400, the interactive subsystem is basically a telnet server that allows ALL users access. If you kill it their screens literally go black and they are logged out with no access till its started again. Just what my boss needed, me coming into the cafeteria to pull him away from his lunch as the entire user base were locked out.

Infor also had all our custom source code, yes we had AS400 developers once and they created our own code to fix the system. When they all left Infor got the code and agreed that they would support it. Did they? Barely!

We eventually jumped ship.

TCL's latest e-ink tech looks good on paper, but Chinese giant will have to back up extraordinary claims

Yes they do.

Relying on plain-text email is a 'barrier to entry' for kernel development, says Linux Foundation board member

Re: Hmm

> Multi gigabyte Excel spreadsheets?

Then you get the call to the helpdesk as the email client says the max attachment size is 20MB :D

Yeah I'm not falling into that trap.

After all these years of turning off displaying images by default and displaying the text body over the HTML one by default someone comes along and complains?

Text doesn't have embedded fonts that can pwn my machine.

Text cant hide links behind a false description.

Text doesnt embed images and other files that may also carry a payload.

I dont know if HTML emails can run Javascript? If they can well text blocks that too.

When developing on the kernel I'd like to be immune from XSS attacks when reading a bug report. Its just one less attack vector to worry about, I can then concentrate on securing my browser properly.

All email clients can view the text body that is send along with the HTML body, assuming that the sending client is actually following the many ancient RFC documents and sending text bodies along with HTML ones. In fact working in IT in a windows environment and having to use outlook I view the text body by default "just in case". I typically end up switching to the HTML view once I know this is an email I typically get (the HTML view does offer nicer formatting obviously).

I need to check the encoding used but I think most emails sent text only are using UTF? Doesnt that even include emoji these days?? Do you realty need the fonts?

If everything follows the RFC's surely this "barrier to entry" is a non issue as it simply doesnt exist. Just send the replies as text! Its easy. What next? Binary config files, binary logfiles?

Oh god that may have already happened...

UK govt reboots A Level exam results after computer-driven fiasco: Now teacher-predicted grades will be used after all

> As an interviewer, I generally couldn't give two hoots what grades someone picked up 20 years ago

A few years back I was being interviewed for a job in C# development where the interviewer thought that my CV (2 pages) was suspiciously too breif because it did not include my GCSE grades that were not relevant for the position I was applying for.

As an example I said that he didnt really need to know my result for GCSE drama or humanities for this kind of position.

His response? "How do I know you are not hiding something?"

Suffice to say I knew working there would probably have me nearly throttling him every morning so I walked out.

Re: Cause and effect

Lockdown was caused by the covid outbreak which was caused by some rich Chinese person wanting to eat a wild bat.

Re: Why's everyone complaining?

> You vote in a bunch of amateurs and charlatans

Well thats what happens in a two party system, and the three part system we had before the (who were they again, oh yes I remember) lib dems committed political suicide live on BBC parliament. You have 2 choices of amateurs and charlatans who only seem different during the campaigning but after the vote...

Although the Tories did make my dream come true, the one I have had since I was 12 and forced me into the EU in 1992 without bothering to ask me. Hmm that argument sounds familiar as if it came up recently.

Well, at least we kept the Corbyn at bay.

Re: The fun part..

Wow,

So a computer that estimates grades did not get the same answers as a human marking actual exam papers.

You would have thought that was impossible?

Favours

There is a reason why when I took my exams my teachers did not decide my final grade.

A very good reason.

I wonder if these students will find they are pigeonholed into a "covid grade" category that will affect how employers will consider the grades.

Will next years students march and complain when they have to go back to the old system where the teachers dont have a say? I bet I will hear next years A level students on the radio saying how unfair it is that some stranger marked them where last years students got the marks the teachers wanted to give them.

Still dont know why Uni's couldn't just honor their offers to students leaving any students who want to, to actually resit the exam after a period of revision. That would at least be more sensible.

GCSE's next. I did not so well at those, maybe I can have my grades retrospectively reassessed based on my aging teachers memories? I'm sure I can make it worth their while to remember good memories ;)

NASA to stop using names like 'Eskimo Nebula' and 're-examine' what it calls cosmic objects

Re: What's next?

> We should not use 'robot' either. It comes from a word that means 'slave'

The word "service" too.

Goodnews

"Goodnews! The new dictionary is out!"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=105&v=R7Pkcg3DdOY&feature=emb_logo

It wont end with the "correction" of nicknames etc. Once that is cleared up the void it creates will force those who wish to correct everything will start looking for new words.

This is just like a language based version of what I saw growing up in the 90's and early 2000's. Where Nativity plays in schools were banned "because it would offend minority groups". Interview after interview, debate after debate. All majority groups, attacking themselves live on TV and radio as they tried to capitulate to the minority groups who were demanding the censoring of the "dominant" culture of the country. Occasionally one of the minorities managed to sneak into the discussion and with a bewildered look on their faces ask where the fuck this censoring crap all came from?

When looked at, this NASA thing, the cancelling of cultural expression to save the minorities who literally have no idea what we are talking about, the editing of the dictionary to delete words that certain people (profiled by their racial attributes no less) can not use, they just seem insignificant by themselves. ANy argument against them is an overreaction etc.

Some people can stand back and see all of it at once and its very very dangerous. Especially if you consider that there are two types of people seeing all of it at once, those who wish to resist it and those who wish to enable it. The enablers are winning right now, if they gain enough ground there will be a Newspeak of sorts. The children of the future will use it and Oldspeak may even get you in trouble. Bit by bit, inch by inch moving slowly towards the new dictionary that is different depending in what colour you are, religion you follow if any, perhaps even what genitals you posessed at birth. Go slowly enough and only the old luddite fogies will remember a time when everything was equal and debatable and applicable to various situations that actually need it to describe history or even a concept, from both sides of history.

When you watch that video, actually understand it, it is alluring isnt it. By defining language and controlling it, we can begin to control thought.

How long till we start on Shakespeare? Why shouldn't we? I bet there is plenty there to correct.

Ofcom waves DAB radio licences under local broadcasters' noses as FM switchoff debate smoulders again

Re: Complete the migration to DAB+ before faffing with FM

That would be forwards compatibility

Re: DAB is terrible quality due to low bitrates

> in general the quality of sound is very good

As long as you are deaf in one ear or only listen lbc or talk radio, like me.

> Perhaps we should just scrap DAB and push for internet radio instead

For free, no access payment or subscription or infact any account. Complete anonymous free access and coverage nationwide, then I'd consider it a replacement.

Brits swarm Dixons Carphone for laptops, printers, games consoles, fridges, freezers to weather out COVID-19 storm

Re: ... and catch Coronavirus

All those points are totally logical and correct.

Do you want us to add accidental deaths to it as well??

Use your common sense.

Forget toilet roll, bandwidth is the new ration: Amazon, YouTube also degrade video in Europe to keep 'net running amid coronavirus crunch

Re: Excuse me...

> I think the numbers change substantially once you factor in the energy that goes into manufacturing the disc and moving it around.

All of which only happens once till it rests on a shelf generating nothing further.

And no need to consider the blu-ray player, it uses enough energy to light a couple of led bulbs.

/me

Looks around at shelves full of blu-rays

/me smiles

Drones must be constantly connected to the internet to give Feds real-time location data – new US govt proposal

Re: Turn it round

> My guns

A question that most gun owners fail to answer adequately: Why do you need a gun?

I can understand someone needing a hammer, but not a gun. Unless one of these are true:

- You shoot competitively as a sport

- You are a farmer and need to shoot to scare away vermin and ramblers (thats a joke btw)

- You live in an area that are infested by invading aliens or Triffids

Otherwise, you simply have totally no need for one. It's like having a boat when landlocked.

Wi-Fi of more than a billion PCs, phones, gadgets can be snooped on. But you're using HTTPS, SSH, VPNs... right?

I suppose that would only work if they were to assume that a key is required.

Chips forming an open network wont use a key.

Re: A lot of WiFi traffic may be local....

Some local connections can be encrypted. My router uses a self signed HTTPs cert for access to its config pages.

I use SSH/SCP to transfer files.

SMB can be encrypted as can NFS, in fact anything can be sent over an SSH tunnel.

Re: We all should keep a link to this article...

> For the next time our respective governments all tell us that only criminal types use a VPN

Or Tor.

Re: Unpopular opinion

This is not a MitM attack anymore than stealing my car when I'm not in it is a hijacking.

Apple drops a bomb on long-life HTTPS certificates: Safari to snub new security certs valid for more than 13 months

Re: There is a way around compromised certificates

I dont use chrome

> maintenance contracts

You get an upvite for having maintenance contracts .

I work in a brewery and the number of times the production teams have asked IT for help only for us to ask normal questions like "who has the maintenance contract" and "when was the last update" and "what company provided this"? Only to be given confused shrugs to the first two questions and the third question is answered by a long waffle on about some now long defunct company that was based in the next town where there now are bulldozers reclaiming a brownfield site.

And when the company still does exist in the next town over, offers a more upto date and totally "drop in replacement" product that will replace the 20-30 year old version with little to no operational changes other than offering support for USB printers and PC control along with all the features the 20 year old unit offered via its buttons and LCD screen you get told: "its too expensive!" and you reply "but this unit blew up after 20 years of not being serviced, £3000 for a fully compatible direct replacement from the same company seems a good investment for the next 20 years" and they replay "we are taking this to the top! Bloody IT!"

That actually happened.

Re: Ludicrous

Totally agree. If you want to keep the pool of certs out there strong detect the ones that are weak and target those.

Whats next? "Oh this wikipedia page about glass blowing has not been updated in over a year, thus all the information about an activity that is as old as the hills is now out of date?"

Or

"That program that was written in the 80's with the last update in the late 90's is too old to be used. Even though its well documented, does not do anything that needs modern encryption (lets say its a compressor like gzip, not saying gzip is unmaintained lol). Even though the source is available and it runs just fine on our system even without recompiling its too old. The bits must have rusted and the bytes values have changed over time that will probably cause errors in DRAM."

"Wait what? you're running it on a system that uses DDR3? My god man, DDR4 is out, DDR3 is a terrible ancient danger to life now that its several years out of date!"