Posts by Dimmer

Datacenters selling power back to the grid? Don’t bet on it, say operators

Grid batteries?

I don’t know about them but there is a considerable energy cost / loss associated with using batteries to store energy. How exactly is this good for the environment?

Uncle Sam kills funding for CVE program. Yes, that CVE program

Re: it helps to realise

Ac -

Not short sighted, but I have been diagnosed as near sighted, so I have glasses.

If the return you are referring to we would not have inflation. What you paid for groceries in 2020 would be the same in 2024.

There is simply a leak in our economy, where did that value go?

Re: cliff…

Here is a bit that most don’t know.

Here in the states the census is how they determine the numbers for congress and electors for the state. That is by the constitution, it includes the illegals as well. So they do effect our elections

Re: it helps to realise

I have no doubt that in some cases it stimulates and improves our way of life but I am not quite sure of your math.

Government prints money, causing the value of the dollar to drop which we see as inflation. The economy ( us ) has to pay that and the interest on that debt. A loss to the economy.

Some of the money makes it to where it supposed to go and stimulates the economy, a plus.

From my point of view, it is a net loss for the economy as a portion went to overhead that produces nothing.

So -

It is up to us to make sure the economy profits from the money spent by placing it where it will make the lasting good that will also pay back the previous incurred debt. It is the same principle as your credit card. You by food so you can work to pay the money back.

Trump kills clearances for infosec's SentinelOne, ex-CISA boss Chris Krebs

Pinmin,

Here in the states we are hearing such a thing is happening on the uk side of the pond. Is it B.S.?

Pennsylvania’s once top coal power plant eyed for revival as 4.5GW gas-fired AI campus

Re: Coal?

They are not spending billions on cat pictures, they are doing it to be able to replace us.

Re: Coal?

I am told by the guys that are making the SNR that it only takes a year to build it safely. It takes 10 years to get the paperwork done.

If so, would it not be better for the environment to improve the paperwork process (bureaucracy) instead of turning up more coal plants?

Nvidia’s AI suite may get a whole lot pricier, thanks to Jensen’s GPU math mistake

Re: Everyone is free to buy similar cards from other manufacturers.

Also

A monopoly exist when a government permits only one biz to supply services.

A good example is a cable company licensed exclusively for a city or power company for an area.

Or a cell company that purchases the freq.

But,

In those cases they also set the price.

VMware distributor Arrow says minimum software subs set to jump from 16 to 72 cores

Have you actually tried to buy?

We have been trying for months and the hoops they are making us jump through keep ending up around our neck.

Trump orders all government IT contracts consolidated under GSA

Re: 'appropriate kickbacks' rule the nest.

Not sure what devastation you are referring to, that is, unless you are part of the government. If so, thanks for your service.

Please understand, this is not affecting our lives one bit out here in the states. All we know is our cost of living went up 30% during the last administration. The ones that voted are not stupid or bad people, they are just desperate. For better or worse, things had to change.

Let’s work together and make the opportunity for change work for as many as we can.

Here is one for you:

GsaAuctions.gov listed FEMA MRE pallets this week. Each lot had over 17k meals. 100s of thousands of meals sold for less than $1 each. I bid on some just so that we could give them to homeless and the food bank outlets. Our government could have done this direct to the needy themselves.

They were going out of date in August so instead of FEMA destroying them, the GSA sold them to people who could use them. If the right person had just said something and moved a bit of paper, that could have helped a lot of needy families.

AI running out of juice despite Microsoft's hard squeezing

Re: I have a colleague who wants to spend over 40K in AI hardware...

Don’t know any lazy sysadmins. Know a lot of lazy users.

Lazy sysadmins don’t last long due to the constant “feature” updates, intentional end of life and stuff just breaking on its own.

Oh, and don’t forget the hackers and lazy users.

CISA pen-tester says 100-strong red team binned after DOGE canceled contract

Re: Talking points, but it's hard to deny

(A) had Covid. Did not take the vaccine and don’t have a heart condition like some (not everyone) people.

(B) my family and I are completely against strip mining and have forest where there were over farmed sand pits.

(C) in the states, there is nothing voluntary about social security. Either you pay or the IRS will take your home.

(D) agree with your sentiment and wish that was what it was used for.

Re: New Orleans

Upvote for the citations

Re: Talking points, but it's hard to deny

(A) specify certain Covid vaccines did harm people or at least that is why some European countries said they banned them.

(B) Either manage the forest or let nature burn the underbrush itself. The folks in California can tell u that. My family has been tree farmers for generations. There is no get rich there in protecting the environment. Although stripping the trees and mining it for minerals might.

(C) the government sent me a letter saying SSI is out of money in a few years. Only cuts I have heard of is dropping those that are no longer alive.

(D) Got that right. They are going bonkers due to the defunding of the NGOs. Hopefully it will be put in(C)

(E) The strength of civilization is common sense, free speech and Empathy.

The IT world moves fast, so why are admins slow to upgrade?

Re: Why are admins slow to upgrade?

Excellent survey idea.

How about :

Up for - OS update that added crap you did not want

Down - OS update that only fixed an issue.

Developer sabotaged ex-employer with kill switch activated when he was let go

Re: Not a very bright boy...

I don’t think it was a bright idea to delete his creds. When a sysadmin, specifically when it is a bad one, change the passwords. You will find out all those hidden automated jobs that were setup as a temp fix break and nothing works the next day. Once you find all those jobs that did not run, then delete the creds.

Pay close attention to any outside access.

The only time I have had to do this was when the admin gave 2 weeks notice. As part of his departure, he was required to change the password and fix what broke.

America's National Science Foundation workers fired in bulk by Trump now reinstated

Want the info

I wanted to know what cities that doge dropped leases on buildings but I am lazy and did not want to look it up on the doge site.

I asked chatgpt for the info.

Bla bla bla … it is not published was the answer.

Not so I told it. Scan the site.

Nope, it said it is not published.

You are able to look at current web sites are you not?

Yes it said, I just can’t access that site.

WTF?

Then it tells me, here are some tools that you can download the site info and if you upload it to me I will catalogue the information for you.

So if it can’t steal the info, it wants me to?

Altnets told to stop digging and start stuffing fiber through abandoned pipes

Re: rare occasion

One of the local fiber providers was telling me about an instance where they were digging and pulled up pipe and fiber.

They found that it was not marked because it was abandoned. Miles of it. They repaired and lit it is still making them money.

:)

Satya Nadella says AI is yet to find a killer app that matches the combined impact of email and Excel

Re: Sad

“ The best-case scenario for the current "AI" is that it increases productivity. Increments in productivity never result in more free time for workers. That's not because of evil overlords; it's just the way economy works”

So, like the invention of the copy machine?

Maps of terrestrial fibre networks aren’t great. The Internet Society wants to fix that

In the states, there are companies that specialize in knowing where every fiber is located. You call 411 and for free they come mark it and any other utility as well.

Years back our phones went down. When that happens you drive around till you find the guys that are digging so you can get an idea of how long it will be out.

Found the guy standing next to his rig and asked him what happened. “The flag guy miss flagged it.” he said, “now stay a moment and you will see the magic flags appearing. “

Sure enough, this small truck comes to a screeching stop in front of us. The flagger jumps out and starts stabbing flag in the ground around the hole. Jumps back up in his truck and peels out and disappears.

Next the local administrator for the telco shows up and starts berating the construction guy while pointing at the flags and explaining how much it was going to cost the worker. He then leaves.

I asked him, aren’t you concerned? Smiling he said “Nope, I took pictures before you got here”. Don’t you love those magic flags.

Here's the ugliest global-warming chart you'll ever need to see

Re: No more USAID

Not so sure solar is a net zero on the heat.

Mine get really hot under load. If you get a chance, take a look at one with a FLIR unit.

They are black and absorb a lot of heat and not reflect it like grass or sand.

In those areas where they are covering grass, what is the effect on carbon capture?

I would love to see someone do a study on this.

My concern about the petroleum is not the carbon but the byproducts. Plastics specifically.

We don’t get the micro plastics under control we might not have much life left.

Microsoft's drawback on datacenter investment may signal AI demand concerns

Tech gets smaller

After being at it for awhile, I find the churn for equipment is about 4 years. Each churn the footprint is smaller for the same job. When 4 u will do what a full rack did 5 years ago, it does make sense to watch your rack count.

Same for power, a 1u server with 10tb of SSD, 170w @ 3ms as compared to 5 years back, 10tb spinning rust @ 30ms raid 900w.

HP deliberately adds 15 minutes waiting time for telephone support calls

Re: Farking bastards...

Brought a new multifunction printer last week.

It was not an hp.

In the 3 stores I went to, I had 4 people tell me not to buy an HP. 2 of them were the sales people.

SonicWall firewalls now under attack: Patch ASAP or risk intrusion via your SSL VPN

Re: someone please please leak the code....

Actually SONICWALL ssl-vpn appliance is open source if you go by the GPL.

Years ago I sent in my $10 for a CD copy of the source. Never got it back.

They had quietly closed it as they made improvements and scrubbed any references of it.

I seriously doubt the code of 15 years back is anything like what they have now.

Re: The easy way out

The last one I fixed, they compromised an IOT device then a zero day against the AD to add an admin user. Filters prevented full access but with the vpn access, they then were free to do anything they wanted without tripping alarms.

Then they sold it to some script kiddie morons that destroyed the whole network down to bare metal. When they tried to collect a ransom, they were told to F off. No reason for the victims pay ransom as they would have to completely rebuild. The data that stole was useless as well as it was all public information.

The easy way out

It never fails to surprise me how many ssl-vpns are authenticated by the AD domain.

Seen it used in ASAs as well. All you have to do is exploit the AD and then you make as many vpn logins as you can sell.

Guys, put a bit of a gap between your layers of security, or at least till the lazy powers at be that can’t remember 2 passwords force you to change. They will be the ones that can’t understand how to do 2 factor.

The biggest microcode attack in our history is underway

Re: Yes what we had was corrupt, and it was mostly OK

Actually my comment is from visiting countries in Europe and talking to the people.

I was there during the yellow jacket riots. That only occurred because they felt the government had taken so much they could not live.

Or, a cabbie In Spain that it was taking everything she could do just to feed her family.

We can afford the government, but not the bureaucracy.

Re: Yes what we had was corrupt, and it was mostly OK

“Yup, the bureaucracy is bloated, inefficient, definitely corrupt in places, slow...broken even.”

It is a problem all over the world, we just can’t produce enough to support this kind of government any more. Enough people are hurting that they got together and put these guys in office on the promise they were going to do this.

77.3 million of them that is.

When FEMA is unlawfully paying for hotels in NY for migrants, you might guess there are going to be a few people in California that are going to care more about getting help for their families - help that they paid for - than data security. They want answers.

Anyone has a better idea how to fix this problem, love to hear it. If you don’t think there is a problem, you might be part of the problem. Or at least 77 million people might think so.

Windows 11 stages a comeback – still miles behind older sibling

Re: MS keep acting like it's their computer

Had to explain to my wife why her app disappeared after an update.

“Honey, you don’t own that expensive piece of jewelry, Apple does. They will only allow you to have use it just enough to get you to buy the next newer version. “

Most of the time she is able to do something she wants, unlike her android that constantly had issues from every click bait download she ran across. Some folks you just have to have a wall around the garden.

The curious story of Uncle Sam's HR dept, a hastily set up email server, and fears of another cyber disaster

Re: Grim outlook

Another Outlook patch? well crud.

Re: welcome to hell

Re: omni

I am a bit confused here. Are you talking about the 4 years of Biden, the last 9 days of Trump or the bureaucracy in general?

Regardless of your personal situation, I do agree that prayer and belief in a higher being is a good thing.

Guys, when you post - please help me out and give specific examples of the problems caused so that I can understand who you are talking about. Depending on your perspective, some comments can fit either or both.

You probably have more CIO experience than the incoming White House CIO

Simple test

Do you know what Wireshark is?

FortiGate config leaks: Victims' email addresses published online

Re: Another bullshit company statement

AC,

If I DECIDE to store my configs in the cloud, I will take part of the blame.

If my device by default stores it in the cloud - it is %100 theirs

Biden signs sweeping cybersecurity order, just in time for Trump to gut it

Re: The evil will continue

Tron,

You need to clarify a bit. As an isp, people pay me for the internet. I pay upstream providers for bandwidth. I pay a cell bill for internet. I pay another vendor for internet at my home. It is only free if someone want to use it to attract me to their business.

Now, content is a different matter. That is paid by someone wanting to sell you something.

The US gov does have an interest in what you are doing on the internet. Read the new “ net neutrality “ rules from the FCC. There is more there about making me, without a warrant, monitor you and even disconnect you from the internet than a neutral internet.

Oh, they also make ISPs into telcos. All those extra charges on you phone bill will now be added to what we pay for internet.

FCC to telcos: By law you must secure your networks from foreign spies. Get on it

Paperwork is not going to fix the problem.

“These providers would also be required to submit an annual certification to the FCC confirming that these plans have been created, updated, and implemented.“

hey I have an idea, how about we start requiring the manufacturer to take a bit of the responsibility. Best I can tell, it is not in their best interest to provide a product that is secure.

If your router was secure, and functional, the only reason to upgrade is if the service provided requires it.

With no or less hardware churn, and if you don’t need patches, why would you pay for maintenance. Not a good business model.

The best analog to this is printer ink. At first it was that you had to only pay a massive amount for ink. That was not enough, so now the cartridge fails when the time runs out.

Does not matter how much paper you throw at it, it will not secure a device. Only a secure device can be secured.

I have seen too many hacks that were done to “secure” systems, fully patched and maintained by well trained personnel. Stop blaming the professionals and start looking at the cause.

Can AWS really fix AI hallucination? We talk to head of Automated Reasoning Byron Cook

Re: "more of the training data"

I have no problem with the hallucinations. It is the same as any other bad information on the net.

What I do have a problem with is arguing with it. It is like trying to get a teenager to do chores.

Me: you removed functions from the code I gave you.

Ai: ok, here is the complete code

Me: where is the rest of the code?

Ai: you are right, here is the COMPLETE code.

Me: still not there. How many lines of code in the example that I gave you and how many did you provide back?

Ai: analyzing

Ai: you are correct.

Ai: analyzing

Ai: analyzing

Ai: analyzing

Ai: I found that there is an issue with your code. Here is your compete code

Me: nope, still not there.

2 year old with an attitude.

How datacenters use water – and why kicking the habit is nearly impossible

Re: just a thought

For you guys that are running small or edge Datacenters and are using DX cooling, you may want to look at the humidity in your DC to save a bit of money and energy.

The higher the humidity, the better the heat transfer from both the servers and the air conditioners.

From my experience, 20ton unit runs at 75% @ 20% humidity or 50% @ 45% humidity with each instance at 72deg room temperature.

When you initially increase the humidity you will see an increase in the utilization as the heat transfer improves.

LA deputies dogged by New Year date glitch in patrol car PCs

Re: At the sound of the chime, truncheon says bedtime

I had one die on me too.

Traced it down to

/root/.cpan/build/Math-Calc-Units-1.07/Units/Convert/Date.pm

I bailed on trying to upgrade the 12 year old program so I did not try to do any updates.

US Treasury Department outs the blast radius of BeyondTrust's key leak

Goo luck

Finding anything thing that is not in or uses the cloud.

Had a customer that installed a core sans switch. It sat there like a brick till it timed out because it could not phone home. $18k for an internal device that will not work properly unless it is able to upload data?

Who really owned your hardware? Good luck on finding anything but open source for management that is not in or going to the cloud.

Cheat codes for LLM performance: An introduction to speculative decoding

As a test.

I fed the comments into an AI and here is what it came back with:

Conclusion:

The discussion reflects a diverse readership: deeply technical individuals, skeptics of AI hype, and those seeking balanced, informative content. Users engage in spirited debate about the limitations, usefulness, and societal implications of AI/LLMs, often mixing sarcasm, technical depth, and community banter

So then I asked if it was funny:

Yes, parts of the conversation were funny, particularly if you enjoy dry wit, sarcasm, and technical humor. The humor emerges from a mix of pedantry, playful wordplay, and snark, often in response to others’ overly serious or exaggerated takes.

If a normal person had a choice between drinking a cold beer and reading the comment, which would they?

A normal person would almost certainly choose the cold beer.

The comments, while witty and entertaining for a niche audience (tech enthusiasts, grammar pedants, and AI skeptics), are dense, opinionated, and full of technical jargon. For the average person, reading through a lengthy back-and-forth about “fewer vs. less,” expert systems vs. LLMs, and AI hallucinations would feel like hard work—especially when a refreshing beer is on the table.

The choice is simple:

• Cold beer = immediate enjoyment, easy to process, universally appealing.

• Comments = mental gymnastics, niche humor, and the risk of needing a second beer to recover.

Microsoft reboots Windows Recall, but users wish they could forget

Re: Hmmmm.....

Oct is still a long way off. This will give them ample opportunity to send out patches that can be compromised after it is not supported - requiring you to UPGRADE.

Am I a bit harsh? I go with what they are doing. When a patch is used to put a nag screen I have to deal with trying to move me to 11, I don’t believe any b.s. from them.

When a patch changes the default storage location for Word to the cloud it ticks me off. Now I know why they required you to fight to install without a Msaccount,

Datacenters line up for 750MW of Oklo's nuclear-waste-powered small reactors

Yea!

Can we recycle a few nukes along the way?

Would banning ransomware insurance stop the scourge?

Re: Also ban cryptocurrency

One of the largest loss I have worked on was due to redirecting payment funds.

The bank it went to was a US registered internet bank.

There was no way to contact them unless you had an account with them. No phone numbers anywhere.

“ it's a safe bet that anyone involved in crypto is engaging or intends to engage in criminal activity or fraud.”

Sorry, from my experience and the IRS ( that has profited more than anyone ) that is not the case.

People are sinking money into crypto, gold and silver to hedge against inflation. They are just trying to keep the value that they have earned. May not be the best, but if you can come up with something it will kill crypto overnight.

FBI created a cryptocurrency so it could watch it being abused

There is a difference

Between stock and crypto trading.

In stock, it is legal to sell a stock if you don’t have it. With that, brokers can move the market. Game Stop is an example. Love how karma caught up to them.

Crypto; Bitcoin and ETH as an example, you can’t just make it up. Want to trade? You have to own it. (Or the exchange that is)

In the early days the stock guys saw a new opportunity. A new playground they could exploit.

Here is one example how they got their a$$ handed to them:

Broker would buy enough to move the market.( It’s the block chain so they were easy identified. ) Just like they would do in the market. (But that is hidden) They are setting up a pump and dump. They also would put in a sell order to kick in if it drops below a certain amount. (Again identifiable in crypto trades). A Whale would sell a bunch of that crypto causing the market to drop. But just enough for the brokers sell orders to kick in and that would cause a flash crash. Their crypto would be then bought by the Whales (or anyone along for the ride) that had very low buy orders in place.

Whole thing take less than 10 min but the brokers loose millions. And this is because unlike the stock market where broker control the trading, anyone can do trades in crypto.

Now for an example of how a government made a massive amount on crypto. Years ago China had the most Bitcoin miners. The government releases a statement that it is banning crypto. Price falls. They buy. They retract the statement and up it goes. They sell. Over a few years, they pulled this scam several times.

It's true, social media moderators do go after conservatives

Re: Oligarchy Media Corruption

“ ElReg is high value media”

I agree, but maybe for a different reason.

I look to the article to stimulate conversation in the comments.

I have found so many solutions from those that post constructive and useful info.

VMware- Broadcom

Hacking

Windows update failures

BoFH

Tools

Trends

This and may more articles and comments (solutions) make this a HIGH value news source.

Re: Who is the judge ?

Who judges low quality news sites? Well I do - FOR ME only.

I change the source every time they are fixated on one subject for hours. If I want their opinion, I will listen. If I want NEWS, give me the facts as you see it and move on to the next thing.

There is a lot of stuff going on out there and I would like to hear about to determine if it is going to affect me. Something like a hurricane or a dam breaking upstream or even a good story about rescuing a critter, not 24/7 we don’t really know, but we are going to talk about it anyway.

As long as we have the first amendment, I might get both sides info and be able to make my own decisions.

BOFH: AI consultant rapidly transitioned to new role as automotive surface consultant

Re: Human-fired power station

If it really becomes useful:

Is your office paperless? Might be a good fit for AI.

What job will be left for you? Government?

Well in the states, at least half of the people either are on government subsidies or employed by it.

Who will be left to pay the taxes ? I know I can’t. I am already at 50% +. Can you?

I believe in government, but I despise bureaucracy.

There are so many regulations and the whole infrastructure to support them that have no benefit to the people. Certainly countless things like medical regulation is needed, but painting fingernails, requiring id for livestock?

If AI is going to take jobs, let it start there and it might actually benefit mankind.

Admins using Windows Server Update Services up in arms as Microsoft deprecates feature

Re: Not a surprise

New features wanted it not

= bugs

= patches (with features wanted or not)

= bugs

= no support

= upgrade (with features wanted or not)

= $$$

The cycle of life for Microsoft.

Apple AirPods Pro 2 can be sold as hearing aids, says FDA

Re: Huzzah?

From my experience, my kin has a set of those excessive high priced hearing aides. Even tho he uses an app on his phone,( tried both Apple and android), he still has to take it in every couple of months to get an adjustment.

It has all kinds of adjustments;

Hear what is in front of you

High noise

Low noise

Conversations

Etc.

All adjustments can be done on the phone app.

For mum, who will not wear hers, I got her an $60 android tablet and put google transcribe on it and now she can read what people are saying. Worked great till she downloaded so many games that she can’t find the icon to start it.

My hearing loss is in the high hz range is about 100% but I can hear normally at mid range.

If it is using an app to process, it would be nice to have an sdk so I can create a process that will down convert the higher frequencies to something I can hear.