Posts by doublelayer

LockBit: Sorry about the SickKids ransomware, not sorry about the rest

Re: Yeah, yeah, just keep using Windows

What, that Linux doesn't get malware? Someone needs to call up the 1990s and see if we can send the slogan back to Apple, since they have had to acknowledge that Macs do get malware. Linux does too. You can install ransomware on any system that you've broken into. All you need is the ability to read files and write them.

If everybody switched to Linux tomorrow, the most active groups would go to the dark web marketplaces, search for "Linux ransomware", find several results, and start using it. The less active that didn't already have their Linux version would start switching their codebases and come for the Linux users in a month. Please stop with the false statements about Linux's perfection; you make those of us who like Linux and understand what it is annoyed.

Cops chase Tesla driver 'dozing' with Autopilot on

Re: Shirley?

"Assuming Autopilot was engaged, wouldn't the Tesla have come to a standstill if the Police had got in front of it and then decelerated to a standstill?"

I wouldn't try it. It might work, but the car would probably try to pass them if it could. If anything goes wrong, the car crashes into the police, potentially causing serious injury to the driver and maybe even the police, and certainly wrecking two cars. Given the tradeoffs, I probably wouldn't take for granted that the system wouldn't make a mistake. Unless there was already another risk to safety, I would use the police's methods and follow it to watch and interfere when possible.

Intel: Please buy these new 13th-Gen CPUs, now with 24 cores

Re: 24-cores on a laptop...

I'm guessing it actually has 8 cores with 16 threads. The OS shows that as 16, but you won't get 16 cores running simultaneously because the hardware is running two threads per core. AMD doesn't have any 16-core chips that fit into normal laptop builds, so unless you're using a laptop with a desktop processor (minimum of 105 W TDP which I guarantee would kill your battery almost immediately), you have 8.

Depending on what you're doing, you probably don't need most of those cores often. When you do get something that can use many cores and is CPU-bound, it speeds it up. For general usage, you probably don't need a faster CPU, which is why I tend to specify relatively cheap and possibly older generation ones when people ask me for a computer, but if you routinely have intensive tasks to perform, such as compiling a large project that can be parallelized, a lot of compression or encoding, etc, then you might benefit from one.

Re: Confusing or what?

If you're building your own computer, you decide by putting things in a database or spreadsheet. Let's see, I want it low-power so eliminate the 180W options, I have a price ceiling, I have my own GPU so integrated graphics are not important, let's see a list of candidates with benchmarks. You just put in whatever criteria you want; it works just as well for someone who has lots of cash for this build, doesn't care about power, and won't be gaming so wants the cheaper integrated version. Alternatively, you pick one at random, do a quick review, and decide whether it's good enough, though I tend to use that method for much cheaper things and do the more detailed version when buying expensive long-lasting things.

If you're buying pre-built, the manufacturer already did that and gave you a choice, and if the box looks good, you check out the specs of the one to three CPUs it comes with and decide whether those are good enough.

Re: Twenty Four Cores.........Umpty Ump Threads........Infinite Confusion........

"So.....why doesn't the marketing of these multiple CPU chips make it a bit clearer that when Intel (or AMD) tell us that "more cores are better".......what they mean is that "your mileage will vary"?"

Because they assume you're either smart enough to know what "more cores" means or that you're dumb enough to buy the thing with the highest numbers without finding out. They just announce that more cores are available, and trust the buyer to determine if they care. They'll sell whatever sounds good to get you to buy one, but similarly there tend to be big benefits in raw performance and general computing when they add cores.

You can parallelize finding prime numbers, either parallelizing the specific verification process for a single number, or more likely keeping that single-threaded (each number doesn't take that long) and using the multiple threads to work on multiple candidates simultaneously. More cores is probably helpful if you want to churn out primes. This depends on why you're doing that, but that's not my problem right now.

AMD has a lot of options as well. They also have suffixes denoting power consumption which don't always mean the same thing (5800X takes 105 W, 5700X takes 65 W, these are just TDP numbers not the spread). They also ignore any number if they've got an integrated GPU, meaning that there are multiple different levels of G class chips. They also have random facts you just have to memorize (non-pro G-series APUs don't support ECC memory, for example, but it's not like they make that clear unless you check the spec sheet to verify).

People want so many positions on the price, performance, and power consumption spectrum that you basically have to have several options for many points somewhere in there. I'm not sure if you can make that easy to understand without doing the research, but AMD has done so no more than Intel has.

Should open source sniff the geopolitical wind and ban itself in China and Russia?

Re: Keep politics out of open source

"You can’t do anything to prevent its use? Then, why bother writing a license?"

The license gets obeyed a bit more often by smaller entities. If I write something and the license says "Amazon may not use this software", then Amazon is unlikely to be using my software because I can sue them and they can lose. They might come to me and ask me to change the license, they might have an employee make a new version of what I did to get around the licensing issue (nicely confusing the legal argument and making their legal position much stronger), or they may just find a different way to accomplish their goal, but they're not likely to flout the license unless they can hide it. If I say "The Chinese government and military are not to use this software", and they decide they want to, I cannot sue them and expect to get anything, and they know this, so they have no reason to care about what I said.

"And if you thought it was being ignored, what possible harm would there be to adding a clause “can’t be used for military purposes, or to kill or imprison civilians”?"

There is no harm to that, but it is contrary to things like the open source definition. Theoretically, it means that military forces of countries I do like wouldn't be allowed to use it either. The reason it's not allowed as free software is that people would come up with lots of other criteria of who is allowed to use it which would compromise the goals of the movement (E.G. no making money from it, no using with Windows, no use by people in [insert country you hate]). If you want to make this license and accept that you won't be categorized as FOSS, there is no problem.

Re: Weird argument

Your resort to what if questions is harming your point. Regulations already exist to deal with those. Therefore, an open source chemical weapon maker is illegal, but not because of open source. It's illegal because of chemical weapon maker. You would go to jail because you made something illegal. If you make something legal, you don't go to jail, even if another person later finds a way to do something illegal with the thing you made legally. If you weren't a participant in their illegal act, the fact that you're useful doesn't cause you to be culpable.

People made cars. People have killed people with cars by intentionally running over them. The inventors and manufacturers of cars are not culpable for those murders.

Re: Weird argument

"Execs from Krupp, IG Farben, Flick, etc at Nuremberg?"

You appear not to know why these people were convicted. Let's review. The indictment lists their crimes. Missing from those lists are anything to do with their products being used for crimes. The lists do include things like using enslaved workers, stealing from occupied territories and concentration camp victims, and providing funding to war crimes. These things are actual crimes, and those are what people were charged for.

How about what they were found guilty of? The following charge was the one that affected all of the defendants at the Krupp trial and wasn't dropped:

Crimes against humanity by participating in the murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation, imprisonment, torture, and use for slave labor of civilians who came under German control, German nationals, and prisoners of war;

And some were also found guilty under this one:

Crimes against humanity by participating in the plundering, devastation, and exploitation of occupied countries;

That's it for the Krupp trial. No other charges received convictions. The use of their products is not why these people were on trial.

Re: Weird argument

You appear to have a few misconceptions about the law. Here's one:

"That’s why the well-established principle exists that drunk drivers can be prosecuted for manslaughter. At the moment they hit the pedestrian, they aren’t responsible for their actions, because drunk."

Rubbish. You are not excused of your responsibility for your actions by being drunk. They committed crimes just by driving a vehicle, whether you hit someone or not. Hitting the person is a second crime, and your being drunk does not in any exonerate you. Doing something else while drunk isn't excused either. If you get into a fight while you're drunk, you can still be charged with assault.

Re: Easier examples

You have made a bad analogy which damaged your point. Writing software that is extended to commit a crime is not the same as performing a nonessential purpose directly in the criminal organization. Typing in a concentration camp is still working for the organization committing the crimes and facilitating it. Making something they used without having any knowledge they were using it is not the same.

You like analogies? Here's mine. Let's say that I'm going to commit some war crimes, namely killing prisoners of war. You have a tool shop. I go to you, buy some hammers, and use them to start committing murders. Are you guilty? No, you are not. If I told you why I was buying the hammers, then you could be. If you gave me the hammers for the purpose, you would be. If you bought the hammers under false pretenses, then I am not guilty for what you chose to do with them. Developers of a library explicitly intended (either designed for or provided for) crimes are guilty for its use, whereas developers of software that is extended by others to commit a crime are not.

Re: Russia's illegal invasion of Ukraine

There are international laws, enacted in treaties, which specify when you can use violence against another country. The most famous ones are U.N. and Geneva conventions, but there are others. There are lots of exceptions to such things. None of those exceptions apply to Russia. Here are some examples:

1. If your country didn't sign them, then they don't apply to you. Russia signed them.

2. If your enemies are a country you didn't recognize, you have a claim that it's not a country and therefore doesn't come under some of the regulations. Russia recognizes that Ukraine is a country.

3. If your destruction is something you arranged but not done by your military, you can find a sneaky way to argue it wasn't you that invaded. Russia's using its own soldiers.

They are in violation of international laws on the use of military forces which they agreed to follow. Their invasion is illegal. Sadly, the ICJ doesn't have the power to make them stop doing it, even though it has the authority to judge them for it.

The hypothetical is entirely ridiculous; just because their processor is RISC-V and their operating system is Linux won't do a thing for their missile's ability to bypass defense systems. That would be in the design of the missile and any evasion systems built into it, and I have not seen any open source hide-your-missile-from-radar codebases out there.

Let's say that China needs a massively fast chip for something. They could build their own from an open source starting point, but equally they could just copy a design from ARM, AMD, or anyone else they want. They don't do that now because they lack the capacity to manufacture it and because they can't sell it for a profit, which is why they're focusing on manufacturing more than design. If they wanted it for their own use, removing the profit motive, they could do a lot of things whether the design was freely licensed or not, ignoring all legalities with impunity.

Non-binary DDR5 is finally coming to save your wallet

I agree with you, and in fairness to them, I can't be sure whether they used the term as a technical term, as shorthand, or not at all and the headline writer came up with it. I wouldn't use it either, but that's at least the reason it was used.

"And what's the deal with the "non-binary" terminology?"

It's just that the previous chips have had 2^n bytes, for some value of n, but now there are some with 2^n*3 therefore with a prime factor greater than two. It doesn't mean anything bigger.

With Mastodon, decentralization strikes back

Re: Standards

The problem with interoperability is that social media companies provide different services. Twitter provides short text and pictures. TikTok provides short videos which I don't think are publicly linkable (not sure as I don't use it, but I haven't seen links directing me there). YouTube provides long videos which are more easily linked or embedded. I'm not exactly sure what Facebook does. Instagram is about pictures, and I think at least some of those are designed to be limited to specific people and disappear after some time.

It isn't always the case that something a social media company does has an analogous action elsewhere. Try posting a tweet to YouTube, for example. Requiring them to have some interoperability when their services aren't compatible doesn't make a lot of sense, and I'm not sure how you can deal with that except by having a collection of social media companies that all do the same thing in a nearly identical manner. Mastadon's setup, though federated, provides one service, which social media as a whole does not do.

I'm all for decentralized services, but it's not always possible or desirable to mandate it. Sometimes, it might be better to let people adopt them on their own as long as the option remains available to them, regulating only to prevent the destruction of the option.

Computing's big question for 2023: How many more questions can we endure?

Re: With every Amazon order:

While we're complaining about Amazon, I'll join by complaining about how they've mixed in refurbished items with search results. No, I do not intend to buy refurbished hard drives. Other things, maybe, but not hard drives. Disabling this takes several clicks and will be switched back with the next search, and you will be doing multiple searches because Amazon's search system is terrible, relying on the searcher to filter out obvious crap. If I keep finding new things to complain about, it will get even more boring, so I'll stop with that one.

Why would a keyboard pack a GPU and run Unreal Engine? To show animations beneath the clear keys, natch

Re: Useless feature

A wireless keyboard emits a signal that can be received at some distance. A wire emits some signal based on signals moving through it, but is not intended as a transmitter and is relatively hard to listen to. If you're worried about it, you have a lot of other wires where more important signals are sent, such as all those ones inside your computer that will carry the information about what keys you pressed after they were decrypted as well as other data. That is easier to hear than the wired keyboard.

As for what is easier, encrypting or shielding, shielding is easier. You can make shielded cables and many have. It increases component costs a bit, but that's basically it. If you make an encrypted keyboard, you need a local driver that decrypts it. You need a method for making sure the driver and keyboard are in sync (they can't just share static keys because it exposes you to repeated text attacks), and that needs to be ported to any OS you might want to use a keyboard with. If you try to use it with BIOS or firmware, that's definitely not going to recognize it. If you have an encrypted keyboard, it's going to need a "fall back to standard keyboard" switch, and everyone is going to leave that switch in that setting.

Re: Useless feature

It's most definitely a useless feature. Your suggestions, also, are not so useful:

"improving firmware security (Rust firmware": Why? Rust's security benefit is avoiding memory safety problems, which do indeed lead to security problems like buffer overflow vulnerabilities. That's a lot more important when input is received from another program, but you don't tend to get multiple programs running on a keyboard. The method for attacking it is mostly absent, and would either rely on any programming interface (which may not exist and is likely not prone to buffer overflow anyway) and user key presses (requires physical access). Writing keyboard firmware in Rust isn't likely to do anything different.

"encrypted USB connections": Not why, this time. More what? I mean you could set up an encrypted serial connection to a program on the computer which decrypts the signal and simulates the key presses, but why do you want to? The only way sending an unencrypted signal over a cable is a problem is if there's listening equipment quite close to the cable. That equipment could also use acoustic methods to hear what keys you pressed if it can't point a camera at you. It's not like wireless keyboards that need encryption both to avoid a more passive listener and collisions with other keyboards. Encrypting your communication on a cable that's right next to you just makes the keyboard harder to use with a computer without doing much for your security.

We don't need that much security on keyboards. Focus on the stuff they're connected to.

Re: Hackable?

I have the same question, but on the opposite side. How easily can I hack it? Not just installing a new theme, but doing some computing of my own on it. If it's got a CPU and GPU in there, that's kind of pointless unless I can compile some code without having to limit myself to their theming system. This keyboard isn't for me, but if I was going to buy it, I'd want to be able to write firmware which takes control of all the hardware and lets me do arbitrary things with it, not just changing the lights.

Too big to live, too loved to die: Big Tech's billion dollar curse of the free

Re: A couple of solutions, offered for free.

"and the only difference between running a desktop 24x7 instead of running a server 24x7 is......"

The difference is that "desktop" implies a machine you're using as your personal computer, doing other things, and server implies something you've set up for this task and possibly a few others, with the goal of a more stable system. The shape of box the hardware's in doesn't matter too much. In my summary of the tradeoffs, I specifically mentioned that a desktop is going to be inside your home network which is probably less reliable than you need and that you may be doing other things with it that impede the system's uptime.

Re: A couple of solutions, offered for free.

In order to do it, you will need:

1. A desktop that you intend to run all the time, taking on that power cost.

2. A desktop that you don't expect ever to have problems that would interrupt your service, meaning that using it as your own desktop where you might damage something or even need to reboot isn't a great idea.

3. A network connection that stays on at all times, including when you're not there.

4. Your ISP to give you a dedicated address which you can host stuff on on your residential contract.

5. Some equipment such as a UPS to automatically recover from power failures.

6. A plan for what you'll do if your power or network goes down when you're not there.

7. The technical ability to run the mailserver software.

A lot of people are missing one or more of those. My ISP doesn't let me run whatever servers I want. I don't have a plan for dealing with a downed network connection if I'm traveling, but I'm also not willing to let my email become unavailable until I come back. I could manage the rest of it easily enough, but these problems cause me to use a server located somewhere other than my house. The general public is likely to lack even more of these items.

Re: Hope

"It's the same way that I'll see stuff being offered for free on Craigslist and it's obvious that the person is really looking for somebody to come by and haul everything away at no cost to the person posting the listing."

That's sort of the point. You can have this stuff that I don't want, and I don't need you to pay for it, but you need to come get it. You are incurring a cost in time to obtain a useful item. I've had people retrieve unwanted equipment to scrap it for parts, and it is most definitely their responsibility to deal with the bits they don't want. If they don't want the item, they won't go and get it. This is nice because I don't have to throw things away when someone will actually use them.

Re: …puzzled?

Not all big religions have confession systems, and those that did didn't have organized systems for sending important confessions to someone who could handle them. Not that it wasn't ever used for blackmail purposes, but that's not what made religion powerful.

What made religion powerful was that people believed in the religious figures and trusted the clerics knew what those figures wanted. If the clerics say that the guy who can sentence you to an eternity of torture wants you to donate a lot of money, and you believe that the torture is a real option and that the cleric is speaking truthfully, you give a lot of money. Bring in social and legal pressure for people who don't believe one or both of those things and you have pretty good coverage. You don't need to leverage confessions for that, especially as people who don't believe in the power of the religion are unlikely to confess something they don't want someone to know.

That would probably work, as long as the ISP resists the temptation to make it a significantly larger bill or charge per month. I've never used an ISP-provided email (I don't think my current ISP even offers them), but I see enough of the things around that people must lose stuff when they let them expire.

Re: A couple of solutions, offered for free.

It does, but I had the misfortune to use that and won't again. I had a PDA in the mid-2000s, the kind that had WiFi (802.11B) but no cellular connectivity. It had a mail client that only supported POP. Therefore, my choices were as follows:

1. Download all the mail currently there to the PDA, with delete from server enabled, then handle it all there. Using a computer later was a pain.

2. Download all the mail to the PDA with delete from server disabled, and then have to deal with it all again on the computer when I used that. Nothing synced information about which messages I'd deleted, moved, responded to, etc. I used it, but as soon as an alternative became available, I stopped.

Re: Centralised service, centralised problem.

"Expect to see a decoupling of the 'Google account' used for sign-in to phones, apps etc. from the actual email service well ahead of this so as to limit potential regulatory issues as much as possible."

It basically is already. You can set up a Google account with a different email address. It's just that almost all Google accounts are Gmail addresses and that, if you go through the typical registration process, they ask you to choose your Gmail address instead of entering your own email. You can still get to that form if you want, and if it became a regulatory issue, they'd start saying that more loudly.

Re: I wouldn’t know how to pick one that was likely to stick around.

The number of complaints about a service is also correlated with the number of customers. If you find a service with few or no complaints, it might also be so small that losing a few customers could take it down. If you can find one with a lot of praise and few or no complaints, there's a reasonable chance they made up the praise and also have few customers. There is no simple solution for figuring out how long something will stay up. You have to research them more thoroughly and have a plan for what you'll do if they tell you they're going away (and hope that they do tell you).

Re: A couple of solutions, offered for free.

That would be nice, but let's be honest, it wouldn't do much for the e-waste problem. I'd be able to get several for next to free as everyone else abandoned them. Most users don't want to set up a self-hosted server for it, so many would be junked anyway. Also, if Amazon just gave out the keys and let people play around, even fewer people would actually do anything, as they'd have to work out the way to best make use of the hardware. Properly open sourcing the platform, including nicely documented drivers, examples, and backends, would take a lot more effort that it's clear Amazon won't bother with.

I like it when companies release source for stuff, but few of those projects ever result in a useful result. Reverse-engineering replacement firmware is hard, and there aren't enough skilled and inclined people for each one.

Re: A couple of solutions, offered for free.

Feel free to use only one, but don't expect others to do so. Being able to read my email on a phone when I'm out is useful. Being able to read it later on a laptop when it's more important is also useful. I'll continue to use multiple ones, but you aren't required to do that.

Re: A couple of solutions, offered for free.

The critique wasn't about whether to use Google, but about whether self-stored mail data was going to work for the general user. I run my own mailserver, and it's a server. It's online at all times to receive data, stores it there, and I have to pay for it. Running that off a desktop isn't feasible, and a lot of people don't have the expertise to do that. Whether you use Gmail or not, it's likely to keep using servers rather than self-hosted on clients.

The era of cloud colonialism has begun

Re: VC

I'm not sure if that's a requirement from all of them, but there is a potential reason for VCs to ask about cloud hosting, namely scaling. VCs are frequently obsessed (sometimes correctly and frequently not) about getting this business to grow really fast. Some businesses can scale just by adding a few more servers, but if it's something that requires a lot of capacity in local areas, then expanding worldwide can't be done so easily if you self-host. The business would have to hire people to either set up colos or datacenters in multiple places, including hiring maintenance staff and therefore working with labor laws in all those places. A larger company can manage that, but one that's just starting out will find it a bit more difficult. VCs may want some indication that there is a plan for adding geographical regions without incurring that cost, and proving that cloud can be used, even if the first regions are self-hosted, is a way of indicating that. Just as their reasons for wanting growth they won't get can be wrong, so can their insistence on cloud, but it does make sense at times.

Don't lock the datacenter door, said the boss. The builders need access and what could possibly go wrong?

Re: rebooting the system

The other thing about that particular exchange is that the laptop concerned was connected to the office's WiFi network anyway, so pulling that cable would disconnect the screens and keyboard connected to it, but would not take the laptop offline because it would switch from a wired connection to real WiFi. I don't know whether they knew any of those facts and whether they even expected that disconnecting the cable would have an effect on their internet connection.

Re: rebooting the system

Yes, this is the other side of the coin. I've had occasions where I've said something along the lines of "If you don't start reading that word for word, I'm going to make you spell every word in the message". That usually gets them to read exactly what it says, although in a particularly angry tone. Of course, by the point I have to say that, I'm annoyed even if my tone doesn't reflect that, and on every occasion when that's happened, the error message contains important details. There will come a time where the error message is one of those vague ones and I've needlessly accused the user of summarizing it unnecessarily, but that hasn't happened yet so I'm happy to apologize when it eventually comes up.

rebooting the system

I would say we should do something about people who don't know what technical terms mean but try to use them anyway, but only the BOFH's methods would work at this point and most of them are illegal. Just as this accountant thought the emergency shutdown was a reboot the system button, I've had far too many discussions with nontechnical friends asking for help who string together terms in a way that means nothing.

The most recent one I remember is "disable the WiFi system", which could mean about five different things but could not mean what they wanted to say, which was "disconnect this USB-C cable which connects to a dock which has an ethernet cable connected to it". I have also recently informed someone that their "tape backup system" uses disks and isn't turned on and that "the email server was erased" is not an acceptable phrasing of "I can't find the message I want in my trash folder because I've never used the advanced search feature". These are just recent examples. I've heard stupider and I'm guessing those reading this have heard much worse, especially those who work in IT (I'm a software developer, programmer, or software engineer, but none of these terms is properly understood by my acquaintances either).

SEC: Startup had 'no functional streaming service', raised $1.3m anyway

Re: How far did they get

This case is fraud as are most of the ones I described. There are some startups that manage to be so clueless that they don't get anything, but that's more in the realm of negligence than fraud. The key is that the operators of the company committing fraud know where the money went and the negligent idiots probably don't have any idea. Either way, there's likely to be lawsuits.

How far did they get

I'm wondering whether they just took the money and ran, always a popular choice. There's the other one I've seen happen: some non-tech people have an idea, start defrauding investors, then eventually hire one or two technical people (either fresh graduates straight off their degrees or my mate who fixed my laptop once) and tell them to build the entire service because "How long could it take to build a thing like Netflix?".

I'm never sure whether the companies who do that are just really stupid about how any project is built (I've seen people not trying to defraud investors who make that mistake, so it's at least possible), or are attempting to have some scapegoats to explain why their service didn't get built.

Pine64 takes another shot at an open tablet after chip shortages killed first PineTab

Re: longevity

"they're not going to be a goer, as far as I'm concerned, until they're running a long term support Linux OS."

That's sort of the point, in that they're designed to be integrated into the mainline kernel. That means that you can install any version of that (until thirty years from now when the architecture is removed for obsolescence). If good software is made for the device, patching it and keeping it maintained should be significantly easier than any Android device has been.

The real problem is in getting the support in the first place. We don't really have any polished mobile Linuxes. Right now, you can probably get any buggy missing-lots-of-features distro and keep it maintained with kernel patches for a long time, but it doesn't have the smoothness that Linux on the desktop has. I'm not sure whether this will ever be fixed, but if it is, it will require hardware to run the beta versions on so that developers aren't limited to Android phones with custom kernels. I want that to happen, so as many reservations as I have with Pine64, I still have to support them as they've done a lot more than the only other player has and I don't see any other companies stepping up to improve on it.

Don’t expect a Raspberry Pi 5 in 2023, says Raspboss Eben Upton

Re: Cheap media player...

At some point, you have to consider commercial media players. I went to some effort to get a Pi to work as a media player for a family member, getting the DRM support in, having a local server for their video files, and a nice tiny USB keyboard as a remote control, only to find that they weren't enjoying using it. They had replaced it with a basic Android TV stick which cost less, had a faster processor, native support for DRM, a client app that could talk to the local server, and came with a remote control they found more intuitive. I couldn't find any argument for why the Pi was preferable, and it meant I got another Pi.

At some point, building everything myself leads to poorer products than getting one that was built for the purpose. They're still brilliant for something that doesn't exist commercially, but if I ever need a media player, maybe I will consider not DIYing one. I've reinvented a lot of wheels, and they don't always provide a benefit.

Re: Bye bye Pi

They are comparable, but depending on the use case, there are some major differences. Both support WiFi and technically there is hardware support for Bluetooth LE on both, but the ESP32's Bluetooth stack is thoroughly tested and the Pico's is absent (hardware support but no official driver). The ESP32 also has a lot more memory on the chip which can be important if you're using it to retrieve data over the internet; it's not that important if you're sending packets but if you're using HTTPS, that uses quite a bit of RAM. It all comes down to what it's used for.

In my uses for the Pi, an ESP32 is usually not viable, as I want a full OS with a lot more resources available to me. It is, however, interchangeable with the numerous other SBCs that run Linux made by other companies. I haven't needed to buy one recently, but it is quite possible that the next SBC I acquire will be from someone else.

Server broke because it was invisibly designed to break

I think some of your critiques are making assumptions that aren't necessarily the case.

"If this is a mission critical application, why didn't "Kris" have a fail over contingency plan?"

We don't know how critical it was, just important enough that it being down for days led to some unhappy people. Since they weren't threatening to fire him, just putting pressure on, that suggests it was probably important to someone but not mission critical.

"No mention of a fail over server or cloud based solution to keep the application going."

We don't have an exact date on this, but it appears to predate the availability of cloud, so it would have to be another server or a different one with extra capacity. Another server isn't cheap. It's not automatically his fault if the request for that level of overprovisioning was declined.

"Why wasn't there a service and support plan on the server?"

You assume there wasn't. Someone got called out, didn't they? Why couldn't that have been as a result of a support plan? They could have one which guarantees a support person shows up (which happened) but doesn't automatically cover all expenses, hence why they would expect to pay afterward, especially as there were new parts brought in as a result of the failed attempts.

"Since they pay for each repair call, why doesn't "Kris" have some spare parts on hand."

You assume they pay for each call. Perhaps they only pay for parts, and their support plan requires that they only use authorized spares. Why buy a ton of those if the engineer is supposed to bring them? Also, how do you know they didn't have some of those things. Maybe they replaced a broken power supply with their spare a while back, hadn't received the replacement spare, and then the engineer decided power supplies had to be replaced (for no good reason as you've already stated) and made them get two new ones. You can assume any level of competence you like, and assuming the lack of it doesn't prove it any more than assuming they planned for everything.

"Where I have issue with "Kris" is where he blames the repair tech for a wrong diagnosis and the amount of down time."

Both being the tech's job. The tech should try to diagnose things rather than just swapping out parts every three days until it worked. Had the tech tested each component, leading to a day's downtime while he went through everything he could think of, I don't think there would be that much complaining as the downtime was necessary to identify the problem. However, the tech's approach didn't appear to check the hardware very much, so most of the downtime was waiting for stuff that wouldn't be needed if the tech tried diagnosing the cause instead of guessing.

Corporate execs: Get back, get back, to the office where you once belonged

Re: Oh good, more dumb absolute takes

I agree a lot with this. The arguments over WFH appear to break into two categories: the people who like working in the office (or the managers who like to have their managees there) insisting that remote work just doesn't work, and the people who like WFH and insist that there are never any downsides to it or advantages of an office. I've seen nobody even try to analyze the possible benefits to the one they don't like as much, just a bunch of insinuations of how stupid and lazy the people who take the other side must be. Then again, it's definitely not the first time when it would make sense to analyze how things really worked and people found a reason not to bother with anything that could be objective.

I've worked in an open plan office. If everyone came in, the noise and chaos were disruptive and I wanted to work from home. If nobody came in, there was no point being there so I wanted to work from home. If a few people came in and they were people I worked with, things worked, although there was still some potential of disruption. If a few people came in but weren't the people I worked with, it was pointless again.

I've also worked where there are offices, and if everyone came in then it helped with working together and didn't create a disruptive environment. Walls kept the noise from a million conversations from drowning out my thoughts and permitted me to have a meeting without necessarily disrupting everyone who worked in the area. More people chose to come in when there were separate offices. Imagine that.

If you're a manager who wants people in the offices, consider whether people actually work well in the offices. In both cases, there will be some people who just don't want to come in, but there will be a lot more take-up of the idea if the offices aren't unpleasant by their design.

Qualcomm talks up RISC-V, roasts 'legacy architecture' amid war with Arm

Re: No better time to start a new mobile OS

Then try changing the compiler target for those existing Linux versions to RISC-V and build a device around it. It won't do any better than ARM versions did, because the average user, and even the technical user when not building the device, doesn't care what instruction set is in there. A phone with RISC-V and a phone with ARM look the same to a buyer, at least if the processors are similar in performance and power consumption (which is probably not the case right now anyway).

Just because a part is undergoing a major change doesn't make it any easier to replace other components. The efforts to build a better mobile OS, which I wholeheartedly support, will not be boosted by a different ISA. We'll have to build them the hard way, which means that we'll get the same results if we stick with ARM and cross-compile later.

Apple preps for 'third-party iOS app stores' in Europe

"weakening the ecosystem safeguards to allow non-curated apps onto iPhones provides many new and interesting exploit vectors for miscreants to discover."

No, it doesn't. You don't need Apple's permission to load code you right onto your phone. That's all you need to search for and discover exploits. An alternate method of installation doesn't let you run anything that you couldn't before; it lets others more easily install something you wrote. This won't generate new exploits, but it would allow someone to try releasing their exploit-laden app outside Apple's review systems. Of course, if it's a working exploit, that app would get through the review anyway, and Apple would still have to fix their OS, not their app installation method, to deal with it. The security systems in place that sandbox apps would not have to be weakened and exploits would not be any easier to find with this method in place.

Re: I hope there's an option to block this nonsense.

Someone doesn't know how to use a computer, but can make an appointment online, has a smartphone, and knows how to enable a different app store, even through Apple's security warnings, but can't read instructions? Those factors are mostly incompatible with each other. By the way, if they know how to mess with their app installation methods, they can also figure out how to use the browser that comes installed on every smartphone, so their lack of a computer is not a factor. This person would be confused how to do anything if they're unaware of computers and can't read the instructions they were sent. In this case, there is a big problem, but it's not where the app is listed. It's that someone incapable of following a process they need was sent only one option for doing so, an option that relied on them having hardware they might not have, which would be a problem. Fortunately, that's not how such things have been done, and this is a made up example you're using to make a flawed point.

Here's something communism is good at: Making smartphones less annoying

Re: "but there is still a difference between a state that intends to organize itself to loo"

The difference isn't in how bad things can be. Some of the worst dictatorships have been communist, and some have not. The difference is only in the appearance and structure, with some related effects on exactly how badly it is run. One major appearance difference is in the structure of the economy, as communist countries tend to talk a lot more about the ostensible strength of the worker than non-communist dictatorships, organizations tend to be legally depowered instead of just practically depowered by government action, and many organizations would be state-owned instead of private. This doesn't make them better or worse. It's like the difference between desktop environments on Linux; they look different and have different effects on the user's workflow, but they all basically do the same thing.

China under Mao spouted a lot of the classic communism points and set up some of its trademark social programs [complete fiascos]. The Soviet Union codified a lot of those things originally. Cuba and North Korea still sound like that today. Non-communist dictatorships often sound very different, if no less menacing. China today, though, is not structured like it once was and no longer uses the classic indicators of communism. It has adopted a less communist appearance, but is no less authoritarian than it was. They switched off "communist theme" on the UI, that's all.

Re: Is it even Communism

There are differences between communism-themed dictatorships and other types of dictatorships, yes including fascism-themed ones. We've never seen a non-dictatorship communist state, and I think the evidence is clear that such a thing isn't possible, but there is still a difference between a state that intends to organize itself to look (or even to be) communist under the top echelons of the dictator and his supporters and those that don't. China used to look like the former, and it was really bad. They don't look much like that anymore, and it's still bad.

To protect its cloud, Microsoft bans crypto mining from its online services

Re: Over selling

"Not that I think it would be a sensible thing to do, of course - but bitcoin is just a compute load. How is it any different than someone who wants to compute Pi : it's the customer's decision as to whether the service is worth the cost. If the provider is making that decision then they've underpriced on the assumption you overprovisioned and they want to hide it."

Treating mining as any other workload seems to have been the policy for a while. That they've accepted people mining on provisioned resources for years suggests that it was probably fine. This means one of two things:

1. They didn't underprovision for years, but they decided to start doing it now. Doesn't seem likely they'd change now.

2. They have another reason. The article suggests one: they're seeing miners stop paying the bills because the value proposition has changed for them. As those miners would have rented some of the most expensive boxes available, those would be some large unpaid bills. I can see why taking some losses and looking at having to file a lot of claims to recover unpaid bills would convince someone in finance that maybe we should cut off this kind of work entirely.

"coin mining is hopelessly uneconomic on a general purpose CPU"

Correct. Basically anyone who is intentionally doing it is using the VMs they've got with lots of GPUs attached. Those cost more, which is probably why Azure has accepted miners before, but with the crash in prices, they've probably had some people not paying their bills as suggested in the article.

Meanwhile, if someone is doing CPU mining, then it's probably that someone is using unauthorized resources, from an external attacker having found a way in to an untrustworthy admin who thinks the increased CPU usage won't be noticed.