Posts by Jou (Mxyzptlk)

Microsoft tosses Teams Live chat into its feature graveyard

I won't miss it.

I have never seen that on any webpage. So obviously nobody was using it.

Attacker phished way into US defense supplier's Microsoft 365 account

No surprise here

Cloud is a datafeast. Anything government realted cannot be in a cloud (specifically public cloud, since marketing dictates that you server room has to be called a "private cloud"...)

Sysadmin summoned to explain italics – to a user with at least two degrees

Re: Ever pick up a law book?

You overestimate people with a degree, especially lawyers.

A degree is a unit of angle

tilting my head by 13.52°, raising my right eyebrow about 1 cm to compensate.

Re: Fail to the Chief

Wikipedia "The Ivy League is an American collegiate athletic conference" - ah, athletic centered. Can outrun me easily.

Re: Stupidity plus arrogance

Yeah, a degree in WHAT... That is the issue, especially if we talk about countries where titles have no protection at all. Everyone can say "I am a <whatever>" legally in many parts of the world.

Uncle Sam aims to help nuclear energy find its sea legs

We will get our three eyed fish

one way or another Blinky will end up on our plates.

Next step for LINK spacecraft – a software update that won't make things worse. Are you listening, Microsoft?

Re: Most probable cause:

Only a chute away. I do!

Most probable cause:

The list of errors is lead by:

Sign error (i.e. do we add or subtract this value?)

Off by one error (i.e. >= or >)?

Base error (Does it start with 0 or a 1 ? Like the count of array members is 100, but the index goes from 0 to 99....)

(The the carry bit and so on)

Microsoft tells engineers to curb their token-burning enthusiasm

Hey, you set up the metric!

And we optimize the metric!

Google Earth's AI makeover survives less than one planetary rotation

I have check the historic images if google earth for shadows at various day and year times. Why? Placement of solar panels, and checking for places where they should not be 'cause evil evil neighbour house chimney...

Apart from that: I did mention larger than personal projects as well, hm?

Simplified planning of a pool, house, road, rail etc. A faster preview of what it would look like. There would be use.

That is an understatement. I just searched (not asked) "planet with orbital period two days", and it answered first "there is none in the solar system", even when I uses "-solar" "-sun" -Venus" and so on no useful result.

Only when I entered "I am not talking about the solar system or venus, you idiot" into the AI chat it offered extrasolar planets. Four candidates with "two days" orbit. A google search check, with results from science.nasa.gov revealed: Only one of those four is correct. Last sentence I wrote into the AI chat was: "Kepler-407b is wrong. HAT-P-23b is wrong. WASP-43b is wrong. TOI-2267 d is the only right answer. You suck."

The google-AI is even too stupid to google-check its own results.

https://science.nasa.gov/exoplanet-catalog/kepler-407-b/

https://science.nasa.gov/exoplanet-catalog/hat-p-23-b/

https://science.nasa.gov/exoplanet-catalog/wasp-43-b/

https://science.nasa.gov/exoplanet-catalog/toi-2267-d/

TOI-2267 d

You beat me to it... Two Earth rotations, or two sunrises...

Russian spies turn public Wi-Fi into malware delivery systems

Again OAuth...

MFA "circumvented". Again. Way too easy to fake it. Again. This feels so much like an implementation flaw. Again.

Water system cyberattacks spread to Georgia, Michigan amid US-Iran conflict

No surprise here.

Even the lowest bits of security for infrastructure, i.e. do NOT make such systems unprotected open to the internet, has not been followed since "too expensive, naaa, humans health is not important enough". Those holes and warnings have been known for decades, literally. Including a tons of warnings from many US organizations which DO give a fuck about it, the manufacturers for their liability "warning frees us from lawsuits" (<- and they are right), and single people who made those issues public many years ago.

Meet the 'internet radical' who helped Microsoft get email and AT&T get online

Re: Nice Article!

Thanks for helping my "23:45 should be in bed" brain. It all looks somewhat odd, so odd that my "this is too weird, something does not fit" alarm went off, which is one of my "stop: goto bed" signs.

Nice Article!

Tom Evslin should make a Tube Channel, similar to Dave Plum(m|b)er :D.

EDIT: is this him or is this another Tom Evslin? The tube seems to be someone else, and that blog seems to be someone else too...

https://www.youtube.com/@tomevslin1499

https://blog.tomevslin.com/

Dev who gave HashiCorp its name returns with a faster terminal multiplexer

Next ist Ghospix

Ghospix:So you can run multiple pixel sessions!

Ghoswin: So you can run multiple graphical application sessions!

Ghosaud: So you can have multiple audio stream sessions!

Ghoswin²: So you can have multiple graphical-audio application session in parallel on one screen, and have multiple screens!

So within the next 20 years it will be somewhere between X-Windows, NT 4.0 Terminal Server Edition (and its 'improved' follow-ups), and Citrix/Parallels. Of course with Agentic AI!

Then:

Ghosframe²: New name 'cause Microsoft sued and won the lawsuit over "win".

Ghosbox²: New name 'cause Shittrix still has a © of "Metaframe", and too similar.

Ghosx²: New name 'cause X is cooler!

Ghosy³: Spoken "GhosWhyCube", 'cause why?

Update Teams mobile app by October or lose your calendar

Re: Teams mobile? Like, on a phone?

I only need that status thingy to work in teams mobile. For the rest I use a real computer. I have clumsy fingers, even on a PC with a good keyboard, if you check my past postings. Now take that to the phone-mini-screen-touch.

Re: Teams mobile? Like, on a phone?

I can, and it works. Most important usage: "Oh, I forgot to set my status to offline".

This is news-worthy?

On the mobile we are more at the mercy of automatic updates than anywhere else, for every app, that is the system behind it. Always force auto update. Why sticking to an old version, deliberately. It is the way that duopoly, here Apple and Google, and only a few gaul somehwere have no yet given up...

A requiem for Optane, Intel's KV cache killer that could have eased the RAM price crunch

Re: 3D XPoint was a missed opportunity...

This is true. The "classical" ECC memory uses a hamming 127 cut off to 64, but if you go a bit higher, which i suspect is done for the internal ECC of DDR5, you can use a hamming distance of 4095 where ~0.3 % parity bits needed - ralistically though 0.6% since it would be cut off at 2048. Or 132071 cut off to 65536, which would requite only 1 partiy bits per 512 bytes (unless I miscalculated, it is evening here).

The standard of 8 parity per 64 bits is probably for simplicity when the technique was introduced and the circuits still had to stay simple.

Re: 3D XPoint was a missed opportunity...

That type of ECC, i.e. use five or nine regular RAM modules, or rather chips a few decades ago, for this was used "back then", when you combined 36 RAM chips or 72 RAM chips on a memory board the size of A4 / Letter. Sometimes the ECC logic was even on that big board AFAIK. The current ECC implementation is practically identical, just shrinked.

But if you want to take modern standard memory modules you need at least five or nine modules for a reasonable implementation, which means a lot of board layout and so on, for at least three better five to nine RAM channels on one CPU. That was easier when the RAM bus was small, i.e. only 16 bits or less.

Re: Software was a problem

For embedd you have a limited specific scope. ROM might be 16k or less, RAM might be 4k or less, and the "disk" storage might bei 4k or less. Even if you 16-fold those numbers you are still in a specific range where you can verify the code much easier. If you 128-fold those numbers you reach the region where Windows 3.11 might run on such an x86 embedd CPU.

Re: 3D XPoint was a missed opportunity...

I bet you mean ECC. This is why AMD. For over a decade now, nearing two decades, real ECC for desktop computers.

My Ryzen 2700x was built with 64 GB ECC RAM for that reason. Then upgrade to Ryzen 3900x, then to 5950x. My plan was to get the 16 core Ryzen with 3D-Cache on both chiplets as soon as it gets available, but AMD released that CPU a year to late, the RAM prices say "no". The 9950x3d2 CPU price is fine, but RAM costing over double than the CPU, let alone with real ECC OVÄR FAIVE TAIMES the CPU?

Oh, and I tested the ECC error correction with RAM overclocking on all three Ryzen. The computer suddenly gets very slow, I get an event log entry, but I can still do a clean shutdown. The server variants have better ECC correction hardware I suppose, 'cause THAT speed difference is not desired there.

3D XPoint was a missed opportunity...

Having it attached like DRAM, practically no endurance problem, four times the amount for roughly the same price and speeds which were, by that time, fantastic without comparison.

The problem: Intel marketing strategy. Only the most expensive Xeon CPUs were enabled for that type of memory-bus attached storage. If every Xeon, from the lowest to the highest, would have had it, it would have been a very big hit. Whether to use it as "swap", or "persistent storage cache", for database transactions files, or actually as RAM expansion since even MS-Windows has the ability to handle two memory speed classes.

We had a lot of cases where with smaller servers which could have used it. By that time most prominent in the lower segment: MS-Exchange, possibly combined via storage-spaces tiering or whatever, we could never put 3D XPoint in use. And for the higher segment: Was not needed there, since the price for more RAM was cheaper than whatever ran on those monster boxes and added complexity was rather frowned upon (i.e. not on the supported list).

But, actually, Intel should have even enabled 3D XPoint for nearly every CPU, not just Xeons, not repeating their stupid ECC-capability CPU politics.

Word worm crawls into Copilot, spreads chaos

It was waiting to happen...

When security has no value. This seems to be the MS-motto since around 2020...

Cassette simulator rewinds digital audio to a more analog time in hiss-tory

Re: Can is simulate the Walkman wobble?

There is a quality difference regarding the implementation, and whether the capstan or the pinch roller introduced it. In quite some cases both, which enabled two tier wobbling.

Re: K7

Or... "Ach hätte ich doch nur den Trans Europa Express genommen" ... 'cause by that time, before 1994, the Deutsche Bahn was actually top tier punctual.

Can is simulate the Walkman wobble?

Or only the Akai wobble?

Microsoft seeks Supreme Court lifeline in pre-owned license battle

Re: Huh???

Actually it is about you buying a fleet of the same car, or dozens of the same house, or hundreds of chairs. Does not change you are right, just nitpicking.

I see double?

Check https://www.theregister.com/Week/

Twice: "Microsoft seeks Supreme Court lifeline in pre-owned license battle"

Twice: "The roller coaster works, but the Six Flags kiosk has gone off the rails"

Twice: "SpaceX just about nails Starship test flight 13"

Twice: plus thirteen double more (I stopped counting after that)

***SHIFT*RELOAD*** Still there...

Vibe coding?

Actually On-Topic: Oh well, the next court thingy for MS... What about going back to quality, at least to the level reached somewhere around right before covid?

Trump expands voluntary pledge to keep datacenter costs off household power bills

Re: Voluntary? Pledge?

Yep, no matter which country, "voluntary" never works for companies. The only "voluntary" you see is the type which can be used by the marketing public relations propaganda department.

Comment in code read 'Dear future me, sorry I wrote this'

The correct response is: Show them the failing on the production machine. It is not your responsibility to give them some repo, but it is the devs responsibility to fix a bug. Once they see the bug, in best case while their superior is there, should make them shut up about a "repo case".

I tend to have a dent in my intended expression to indent.

What I meant is, since those 80 columns I worked with last millennia, indenting with two spaces is minimum. With 40 columns I'd agree, one space is enough, but 40 columns was the 6502/6510 era, when I was 10 to 14 years old, and such style had not reached me yet.

193 cybercrims arrested, accused of plotting 'violence-as-a-service'

Re: Scary, and what to do:

The Stanley Parable has an achievement "Go outside - Don't play The Stanley Parable for five years."

Which I have, of course, but should have it double since I paused nearly 12 years before playing it again.

Can we get such "achievements" here too?

Support newbie figured out how to avoid all-nighters, and his colleagues hated him for it

Re: Bad data coming in

> the-case-of-the-missing-comma

Thanks, that was a delightful read!

Re: Bad data coming in

> shares your personal information with any random advertiser

Ah, you should have stoppend after "random", since "everyone" is probably closet to the truth.

Re: Bad data coming in

> theres Data Lakes now

Add "Data Sink", "Data Hole" and "Data Whoops"

Yeah no. The trick is to know when it saves YOUR time. Automate it only for you, but write up the hours minus 15 minutes others needed anyway. And be praised that you need 15 minutes less than all others.

Microsoft fiber foul-up cut off Azure California for almost five hours

Not enough paths and configured metric?

When a customer cuts off a few hundred workers of a subsidiary that way, no problem, can happen. But for MS this means: Really not enough paths, and really not even metric and/or BGP configured accordingly? I learned metric and how it works before the year 2000 and used it accordingly, BGP came later (though not many customers used it, and it was overkill for most). Should be "basic knowledge" for a company like Microsoft, and easy to prepare to atl that in advance...

Latest Musk merch drop runs entirely on child labor

Re: Not what I expect

Nothing else expected from that type of AC. Not owning any (Musk-produced-) product, including no Tesla. Not even a Tesla coil. Not even a Nicola. Just a Mitsubishi Space Star Edition 100, fine for European streets. <search engine as a verb>-picture search for it.

Re: Not what I expect

Your other headlines did not mock complete defenseless, that is the difference I see. The SUN would write this headline style.

Oh dear, how sad, too late... Now it is on the net and we will we will mock you. *boom* *boom* *clap*

Astronomers spot exomoon candidate that's almost as massive as Jupiter

> in terms of what they are

Suggest a good specification, it might get accepted. It is science, not dogma.

Nice sizes!

I stick with "moon". A star is the center, then that big planet, which makes this indeed moon. Which might have many second degree moons (aka satellites), like Jupiter has many moons.

LG monitors are using Windows 11 feature to serve adware

Re: Total C-Suite fail

They can. Connect a satellite dish. Done. Linear TV, if you can remember, still exists. Terrestrial TV works too, but the picture quality is a mess compared to satellite as source. You can even connect a 4k blu ray player, no internet required... Or a little linux box which does everything the way you want.

Re: Total C-Suite fail

You totally miss the point that, in our case, a 77" monitor (my specific case) with 4k and 120 Hz literally does not exist. And my C1 from 2021, like most others, has a PC mode and a Game-console mode. Even my 65" Samsung from 2016 had it, though the follow up Samsung from 2021 I tried was such a massive failure I switched to above mentioned LG. Of course disable a few auto-brightness nonsense in the service menu is required.

I work at 100% zoom instead of 200% or more zoom, have more actual space instead of wasting it, being able to do pixel-edit in comfy 1.5 to 2 meters distance, using it as ebook-reader which allows sitting straight instead of head bowed down to the reader - important for your back. Except when I read from to couch :D.

Re: Total C-Suite fail

Funny part, this is where LG has no issue. At least not my OLED C1 TV, which is >99.99% used as 4K 120Hz monitor. Neither LAN or WLAN connected.

The newer Models of C* and G* seem to behave the same. https://www.youtube.com/@hdtvtest if you are nerdy enough and https://www.rtings.com/tv .