Whilst true, my very basic knowledge of gases is that whilst helium is incredibly slippery and escapes almost anything, the point of the helium being there in the first place is it offers lower resistance to the spinning platters compared to regular air. Once the helium leaves, it's going to be a vacuum assuming the drives are sufficiently sealed to not let anything else in - but would helium really want to leave an area of lower pressure (the now leaking drive) to migrate to a higher pressure? That's not what gasses like to do.
Posts by Solviva
295 publicly visible posts • joined 8 Dec 2017
Man who binned 7,500 Bitcoin drive now wants to buy entire landfill to dig it up
Tiny Linux kernel tweak could cut datacenter power use by 30%, boffins say
Re: If you're pushing data out 100 GbE ethernet interfaces
You can flood a 100 GbE interface with a single core, but this requires kernel bypass techniques - DPDK or libVMA to name a couple. At high packet rates the context switching between userspace and kernel is a significant overhead which these schemes avoid, with various disadvantages on the way so they aren't completely plug in replacements.
Wonder how this compares to good old interrupt moderation? Sounds like a similar idea - instead of interrupting on every interrupt, wait for either X interrupts before the application is interrupted (heavy traffic) else if Y time has passed since it was last interrupted (light traffic) fire an interrupt.
Devs sent into security panic by 'feature that was helpful … until it wasn't'
A (Swedish) remote desktop application Thinlinc 'helpfully' translates the dialog to whatever country it believes you're in, not by locale in your computer but based on geolocating your IP. So good luck should you say visit South Korea and need to fire up Thinlinc (OK the dialogs are predictable so you can guess what it's saying). The daftest part is there is no option to configure this!
Cards Against Humanity campaigns to encourage voting, expose personal data abuse
Did you hear the one about the help desk chap who abused privileges to prank his mate?
Ahh sometime in the early 90s my dad had a jar of coffee in his cubicle. Over time he was suspicious that there seemed to be less coffee in it when he opened it in the morning than there was the last time he closed it the previous day. Not one to let the mystery continue unsolved he placed his camcorder somewhere out of sight, with a view of his coffee jar and left it recording one evening after he left.
Mystery solved, it was the cleaner that done it!
Showed the video to his boss and wanted something done, boss was obliging but his managers said that as the evidence wasn't captured on company equipment there was nothing they could do. Strangely though the coffee after this stopped disappearing on its own...
AMD reverses course: Ryzen 3000 CPUs will get SinkClose patch after all
I've got a few AMD systems at work, Threadripper and Epyc. From investigating this it seems the Epyc chips have patched microcode available now for Linux which can be loaded via the kernel at boot. Anything not Epyc needs to come in the form of a new BIOS. Thus it's all well and good AMD supporting the 3000 series with a patch, but how many manufacturers are going to have a BIOS update for this?
Does Windows fair any better in getting microcode updates for the non Epyc chips?
As of now, Supermicro have no recent BIOS updates for my AMD systems.
Core Python developer suspended for three months
Angry admins share the CrowdStrike outage experience
Game dev accuses Intel of selling ‘defective’ Raptor Lake CPUs
Julian Assange pleads guilty, leaves courtroom a free man
If it was so water tight, why was he not detained when he asked wether he was OK to leave Sweden? The simplest option would have been to say you can't leave Sweden, and if he left he would then have an arrest warrant served for leaving when not allowed. That's not what happened though as they clearly said he was free to leave.
Re: "certain types of journalism won't be tolerated"
Better go look at the facts before telling a good story. He was questioned whilst in Sweden and asked whether it was OK for him to leave Sweden, to which he was told that was fine. He left, as per his pre-scheduled plans. Sometime later the Swedish prosecutor decided she wanted to formally interview him and so issued an arrest warrant at which point Assange moved in to the embassy.
Volvo recalls all of its 72K EX30 cars due to software bug that obscures speedometer
Re: "Sweden-based car manufacturer"
Volvo (cars) still have their HQ in car-hating Gothenburg, in the same location as one of their main factories and where most of their R&D happens. Sure Geely owns the brand and has input but on the ground it's stil very much Swedish.The recent-ish change on the interior (knobs to Ipad) could be blamed on the changing demographic of Sweden, all these touch-screen Ipad loving foreigners influencing the Swedish design hmm.
Re: I am SO happy to have a classical speedometer
My 2013 V40 has a digital instrument display, and smallish (it's the larger option) infotainment display. I've set my infotainment to show the speed in the corner, and I guess it's more a me thing (takes a long time for me to read an analogue clock such that the time one processed is no longer valid :) but I always glance at the infotainment for the speed and ignore the actual speedo.
When I first heard about this I thought "so what", assuming the instrument display existed, but discovering that IS the instrument display, well like most people I hate touch screens in cars with dynamic menus and screens. If I want the volume up or down, there's a button or knob that does that job and that job only. For heating, cooling the same, no need to look where my hand is, my hand goes roughly the right place and can feel to get the correct button. Try that on a touch screen.
Indeed who actually designs these things? (I should ask some of my former colleagues that defected to Volvo...).
Two cuffed over suspected smishing campaign using 'text message blaster'
Recycling old copper wires could be worth billions for telcos
Re: Financially viable?
Which really is borderline insane - shellfish are fished in (e.g. European waters), shipped to china to be deshelled with cheap labour, to be shipped back to the origin as that's cheaper than simply deshelling at origin. Point being labour in China can be stupidly cheap, so these cheap labourers go the fun way of burning the wires rather than stripping by hand. Well I guess not insane, simply good economics in accordance with the local environmental policy.
Meanwhile in the EU we've got to suffer plastic caps that stay attached when unscrewed because apparently the separate caps seem to always end up in the sea (isn't that always the argument, plastic bags... everything ends in the sea). Can't say I've ever taken the cap off and left it separate from the bottle when finished and I don't know anyone else who does, but seemingly somebody takes joy in separating the two and then throwing the separate cap into the ocean rather than leaving the cap attached and throwing the bottle and cap together into the ocean.
Google to push ahead with Chrome's ad-blocker extension overhaul in earnest
Re: Chrome has rigorously infested both the corporate and K-12 education market share
Hmm maybe I should actually give Brave a try. I'm just so ingrained into my (current) 87 Windows the busiest of which has 157 tabs - yes I'm doing it wrong, I treat tabs as L1 bookmarks, with bookmarks as L2 bookmarks that almost never get any attention (one of those tabs is even the Brave homepage from 2023?!).
Can brave import Chrome tabs/windows and keep the size of the windows as they were? I might just try tomorrow,,,
I can fix this PC, boss, but I’ll need to play games for hours to do it
Re: Config.sys joys
Or be lazy and forgo the use of an MDA which then let you get base memory something above 700 kB.
Ahh the days of holding old PCBs stacked full of soldered RAM chips over the gas stove to desolder them, then popping them in iSA memory expansion boards to get I think 4 MB or maybe even 8 MB of very slow memory. Used these in a 486 when Win NT (4 I think) refused to installed as there wasn't enough memory (I guess I had 4 MB total in SIMMs), so lobbed these cards in and it passed the memory check only to take about a day to install thanks to the fine performance of this old RAM :)
NT worked fine with 4 MB after removing these...
Apple to allow some iPhones to be repaired with used parts
How a single buck bought bragging rights in the battle to port Windows 95 to NT
Why have just one firewall when you can fire all the walls?
Apple swipes left on the last Touch Bar Mac, replaces it with a pricier 14″ model
Re: Ports, baby, ports!
Thankfully the M1 MBP series re-introduced all the ports that Apple locked away in the safe since I think 2016 or 2017, and ditched the touchbar. They also, oddly, fattened them up too, such that physically it's almost identical to the 2012 - even the ports, with the exception of no thunderbolt & USB-A, instead just 3 USB-C. It really was a happy accident my 2019 MBP didn't take kindly to imbibing honey sweetened coffee in November 2021... The only downside was the lead time for the M1 ended up being over 4 months, so it was back to the 2012 with the decaying screen coating (that being the 4th replacement screen for that issue).
The iPhone 15 has a Goldilocks issue: Too big or too small. Maybe a case will make it just right
Not a fanboy here but with the processor you're not comparing oranges to Oranges.
Last year's 14/14 plus had an A15. This year's 15/15 plus has an A16. So yes the A16 is a year old, but then it's a year newer than that in the 14/14 plus. If you want this year's processor you need to go to the pro models. If you went from a 14 to 15 pro, you'd be advancing 2 generations.
Sure they could put the same processor in the standard and pro phones and differentiate them in other ways, but they choose to give the non-pro phones last year's pro processor, which is almost certainly why the non pro 15s still have USB2, as that's what lightning is.
BMW deems drivers worthy of warmth, ends heated car seat subscription
UK flights disrupted by 'technical issue' with air traffic computer system
Re: Are you f**king kidding me?
Clearly they never though anybody would be naughty enough to supply an invalid / rogue flight plan. I mean why would somebody want to do that, they* wouldn't be allowed to fly if their flight plan wasn't valid, and by filing a flight plan they clearly want to fly, hence pointless exercise so an impossible situation to arise.
*Along with all other flights in UK air space.
Soft-reboot in systemd 254 sounds a lot like Windows' Fast Startup
Re: Hibernation | Microsoft Fast Startup | systemd: Soft-reboot
Hibernation brings you back to the point where you left off - that unsaved document is still there and still unsaved. Fast start, well applications may open, they may open documents that have been auto-saved from a checkpoint.
This new soft-reboot is just that, if you have a running system, you could do a normal restarted aka warm boot, a cold boot where the BIOS/UEFI goes through all it's init stuff, or the systemd-boot where you basically skip the BIOS/UEFI part and the bootloader. Starting from cold/hibernation then this soft-reboot has no effect there.
On gentoo (without systemd), you're free to restart pretty much anything you like. Upgrade core packages, restart the daemon and off you go. The only thing you can't update and restart is the kernel and I suppose init. Why you'd want to restart init after upgrading - init's job is to initialise so restarting fot the sake of init is somewhat pointless unless there's some serious bug there. As systemd can only restart with the current kernel then this fast restart seems somewhat useless.
If there's a zombie process, does that actually get killed? Then maybe that's a reason, but if I'm going to the trouble to restart & kill everything, I'd rather spend the extra few seconds to be able to simultaneously load the latest kernel / kernel patches.
Google Street View car careens into creek after 100mph cop chase
Jumping to conclusions. If he was honest he would have suspected it being a Google car (good chance it was), and 'confirmed' it by the writing on the vehicle (although how hard is it for somebody to get Google Street View printed and stick it on their car) but simply seeing the camera is no confirmation.
I knew the suspect was reaching for a weapon in his pocket so I shot him. Turns out suspect had an itch just there and no weapon.
Point being, seeing a streetview style camera on car is not a guarantee that it is indeed a Google vehicle, or vehicle operating on behalf of Google. To say that's how you concluded it was Google is blatantly false.
"The officer present, Chief Landon J Dean, dutifully began pursuit – the speed limit on interstate highways is 70mph, 15mph in a school zone – and said he was able to identify the vehicle as a Google Maps car by virtue of the 360-degree cameras mounted on the roof."
I call BS. It could have been any of several companies who do this, the fact it has a camera on the roof doesn't identify it as Google or anybody else. The text on the rear of the vehicle, however, gives the game away.
That old box of tech junk you should probably throw out saves a warehouse
YouTube's 'Ad blockers not allowed' pop-up scares the bejesus out of netizens
Re: I do feel for Google.... but...
Big Clive is just starting to introduce (mid-video) adverts in some content. He's be vehemently anti-ad interruptions, but having discussed with his Youtube 'handler' they recommended adding mid-vid ads to older videos as a compromise so the latest content can be free of interruptions but back catalog has interruptions.
Why even bother? Well, it gets more exposure for the videos with ads, so yes it's the content creator's decision (if they're monetising the video, else it's entirely YT's decision) to add more ads to videos for better exposure. So indirectly YT is forcing creators to add ads. "Put ads in and we won't hide your videos" kinda thing.
SpaceX's second attempt at orbital Starship launch ends in fireball
Re: bad, very bad
In this case, the launch 'worked' - it didn't completely destroy the launchpad. The vehicle got lift, yet several engines failed. They'll have data on the engines, but sounds like they understand they currently have an engine failure rate of X, so once X is low enough that there should be sufficient good engines to lift the craft then you can start full assembly testing.
Today they learned that the separation has issues - would it have been better to spend however long it takes to get an engine failure rate to near 0, then launch sometime in the far future, only to discover the separation has an issue? Now they can in parallel continue developing the engines and also investigate the separation issue.
CAN do attitude: How thieves steal cars using network bus
Re: Why
Funnily it happened to me yesterday.
I'm the sole user of my car. There's a switch to alter the light setting - off, auto, parking, along with a light above it indicating the lights are on. Unfortunately this switch and light are 100% obscured by the steering wheel and to look at them you need to shift your head a good deal to the left. On the instrument cluster display, the only light indication is for when you're on full beam.
The switch lives on auto and works perfectly.
Took the car for annual inspection last week, and it would appear the inspector fiddled with this switch ultimately leaving it in the off position. Cue a coach frantically flashing me yesterday when it was approaching dusk, me bemused. After a minute or so, I tilted my head to see... that b*ard inspector!
For whom the bell polls: Twitter voting is for Blue users only now
Here's a fun idea: Try to unlock and drive away in someone else's Tesla
Re: Is this your car, Sir?
Interesting question, if you bring the car back in one piece then insurance is moot. If you were to have an accident then that would be dealt with as vehicle taken without consent, in which case I've no idea what happens as I don't plan to borrow a vehicle without consent :)
Simple just like any other smart card (although manufacturers may go the dumb route). Key says "hello" to car, car replies "calculate the answer to X using your private key". Key replies with correctly calculated answer. You can record this, but unless the car asks the same question twice, your recording isn't of any use,
Then there's the relays used for stealing cars when the key is still in the house - it shouldn't be difficult to calculate the latency of the comms to decide how close the actual key is i.e. 1m away or 5m away.
Learn the art of malicious compliance: doing exactly what you were asked, even when it's wrong
Re: Steves Failure
Why ask an infinite (OK finite in this case) number of possible ways for which the boss does NOT want the cards sorted, as opposed to the single possible way the boss does want the cards sorted.
Customer walks in to a car dealer, asks for the car in red.
"Are you sure you don't want it in black?"
"No, red"
"Are you sure you don't want it in white?"
"No, red"
etc for all the available colours.
vs
"So to confirm, you want the car in red"
"Yes"
WINE Windows translation layer has matured like a fine... you get the picture
Re: Ribbon interface holdouts
There's dynamic 'contextual' interfaces and boring static interfaces.
Personally I like starting at a fixed point and knowing where I'm navigating to, consistently, regardless of what Clippy thinks I may be doing.
Same for these modern vehicles with Ipads for centre consoles. I like being able to adjust the heater without taking my eyes off the road, as the knob has one function and is always located in the same place.
Contextual can be good if you are genuinely lost (although your state off loss may be down to the contextualness), but for speed muscle memory FTW.