Posts by nojobhopes

British Perl guru Matt Trout dead at 42

Re: No mention of a cause?

Even when there's no direct cause it can still be a fatal error. https://archive.shadowcat.co.uk/blog/matt-s-trout/indirect-but-still-fatal/

RIP

Security company hired a used car salesman to build a website, and it didn't end well

Re: That reminds me

They should have paid you a bug bonus. But then again they are all a bunch of bankers.

Greater Manchester says its NHS analytics stack is years ahead of Palantir wares

Re: Wait...

And this included "a series of non-competitive deals with the vendor". Is "non-competitive" also "anti-competitive"? Or just corrupt?

Microsoft-backed AI out-forecasts hurricane experts without crunching the physics

Re: Point it at the stock exchange data

> Predicting weather, though, is a different kettle of fish entirely.

Would you be referring to a kettle of Michael Fish?

Latest patch leaves some Windows 10 machines stuck in recovery loops

Re: Surprised

It's ok, they are coming up with something new called Windows Updates and Service Packs. It lets then fix all the bugs in Windows. Should have them all fixed within a year. In other words, if they followed your advice, Mr Gates would be shown the door (or window) a few decades ago.

‘Infuriated’, ‘disappointed' ... Ex-VMware customers explain why they migrated to Nutanix

Re: Can we start IT revolution 100% devoid of USA in 10 years?

Another reason for doing this is the USA's CLOUD act, allowing them to grab data from servers outside the USA. FinTecs, governments, and anyone who cares about GDPR would love to have a fully european cloud provider at scale. Obviously there are some, but have you heard of them?

Apple has locked me in the same monopolistic cage Microsoft's built for Windows 10 users

Phones have to work everytime and all the time. When you are calling a cab you don’t want some spyware overwriting core system binaries or interfering with other applications, like they do on windows.

iOS was designed to limit the damage that can be done to apps and to the OS itself. We have had cross application protection in memory since the first multi-user mainframe - that's why a page fault error exists. iOS (and android) extend that protection to the filesystem.

Apps are locked down. They are contained.

You make a choice - Restrictions and stability, or fewer restrictions and more risk.

If you are buying a machine for your low tech internet browsing uncle which YOU have to support over the PHONE, you may want to pick a more locked down system than the one you pick for yourself.

iPad OS is an interesting experiment along the journey of computer history. How far can you take an os with app separation and use it for general purpose tasks. It is an interesting experiment and it challenges older OSes to be better.

PS. Your article succeeded in rage farming over 150 responses. Well done.

Surprise! People don't want AI deciding who gets a kidney transplant and who dies or endures years of misery

Who dares judge the value of another?

I don't want any person judging the moral superiority of one human over another. Not AI. Not the participants in the study. No-one.

It is not possible to compare the true worth of two people. There is no such measure.

Number of offspring, years of service, body mass index, criminal record, or any other measure can never reveal how much someone is "worth". Are these the factors you use to measure your friends? No.

And it says nothing about the future. Who is about to invent a cure for cancer, or give someone a smile and save them from suicide? If humans can't judge humans, don't expect AI to do it.

Stormy Monday's reply describes the English system and it's mainly based on medical factors, and time waited. It's a good system.

Stop playing gods. Don't create AI gods. Give your head a wobble and stop dicking around with peoples' lives.

Raspberry Pi hands out prizes to all in the RP2350 Hacking Challenge

Re: Transparency

> how they fucked up, made what in retrospect were schoolboy errors

This is absolutely not what happened. The previous microcontroller, the RP2040 didn't have security flaws - it simply didn't have any features to protect software from being extracted or prevent memory from being read, or malicious code from being inserted and executed. Being aimed at hobbyists and tinkerers, the RP2040 has good support for debugging, allowing access to these things. With the RP2350 they added features to prevent this sort of access. This will appeal to commercial customers who don't want to share their IP or code, or have data extracted from the chip, or even to have people create a better version of their software or device.

If you read Upton's article - https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/security-through-transparency-rp2350-hacking-challenge-results-are-in/ - you'll see it was not schoolboy errors. Things like the order of instructions generated by the compiler come into play for some of the hacks. And if you read the hack write-up, you can see the extent they went to to extract this data. https://media.ccc.de/v/38c3-hacking-the-rp2350 Aedan says "Ultimately, the significant amount of luck (or lack thereof) involved is a reminder of the need to meticulously understand and validate complex systems."

If you can do better, please have a go.

Re: Transparency

> single points of failure are a bad thing

I am sure the designers are well aware that single points of failure are bad. But when you are building a microcontroller for devices the size of a bus ticket (or smaller - https://www.seeedstudio.com/Seeed-XIAO-RP2350-p-5944.html), the opportunities for full hardware redundancy are sort of limited.

Microsoft hijacks keyboard shortcut to bring Copilot to your attention

Re: Do they even know what users do or how

Yes, getting windows from "off-screen" is the main use of Alt+Space for me. If microsoft had fixed this little issue, I wouldn't be so bothered.

Microsft are the makers of a windowing operating system which still can't position a window onto a real screen after decades of upgrades. Do you really trust them to run AI?

UK energy watchdog slaps down Capita's £130M smart meter splurge

I don't want to cause you worry, but it might become your problem when they send bailiffs round to see John, who "lives at" (checks notes).. your address.

That hardware will be more reliable if you stop stabbing it all day

Re: The boxes are labelled on the outside

Stop thinking outside the box

Microsoft slips Task Manager and processor count fixes into Patch Tuesday

OCR?

Automated test tools for Windows have been around for decades, and while some have OCR capabilities, most do not need them. Automated tests can easily reach into the app and grab the status bar text, if the app uses Windows controls. And even in the modern world where there are too many windowing toolkits, tests should be able to rely on the controls exposed to Accessibility tools (like Screen Readers). On Windows we have the luxury of 2 standards, of course. Microsoft Active Accessibility or UI Automation API.

Boeing union workers in US reject contract: 96% vote to strike

Re: replace them all

Maths correction - 4% of world population.

Maybe you did the division and forgot to multiply by 100 to get to percentage.

It's not rocket science.

X marks the spot where Twitter's severance math doesn't add up

Re: Hopeless

Ironic since Musk was CEO of Paypal for a while

Let's kick off our summer with a pwn-me-by-Wi-Fi bug in Microsoft Windows

Re: More of the same but only more so !!!

"Spend the billions making the Software that is already here such as Windows 11 + all the apps that everyone uses each day actually *work* as advertised"

Totally agreed! But can we start with Windows 10, or 7, or XP? 11 seems to be a power hungry scam and environmental timebomb, when everyone throws out their powerful computers because they are not quite powerful enough to run Micros~1's latest spyware.

China shows off machine-gun-toting robot dog and its AI-powered puppy

Re: Bad Brother

They released an SDK / client for talking to the Spot API built into the dog. For people creating command and control front ends for the dog's err, back end.

Urban combat operations?

"in our urban combat operations, replacing our members to conduct reconnaissance and identify enemies and strike the target during our training"

Err, what urban combat operations are China engaged in?

Hubble Space Telescope is back in the game after NASA fixes gyro glitch

Jared wants to help

Jared Isaacman wants to save Hubble during his Polaris 2 expedition.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jnUO4eJJNBo (1 minute video)

Greenpeace calls out tech giants for carbon footprint fumble

Have you compared the population of China with the UK?

Bug hunters on your marks: TETRA radio encryption algorithms to enter public domain

Quantum-proof ?

"quantum-proof" err ok. What do they know we don't?

As NASA struggles to open OSIRIS-REx's asteroid sample can, probe heads off to next rock

or WD40

Windows 11: The number you have dialed has been disconnected

Re: Windows 10 was the last

You are correct, we've heard this before

"Windows 10 is the last version of Windows that will ever be released" - The Register

https://www.theregister.com/2015/07/31/rising_and_ongoing_cost_of_windows/

"Why Microsoft is calling Windows 10 'the last version of Windows'"- The Verge

https://www.theverge.com/2015/5/7/8568473/windows-10-last-version-of-windows

Techies at Europe's biggest council have 8 weeks to pull finance reports from Oracle system

Screwed twice?

We spent too much on our accounting system... because of Oracle

We don't know what we spent.. because of Oracle

CERN swaps out databases to feed its petabyte-a-day habit

Cardinals at CERN? Angels and Demons?

Why these cloud-connected 3D printers started making junk all by themselves

Re: More Vendor Bullshit

> consider what materials you sensibly allow on your printer

Kids off school during summer holidays... raining outside... could be _anything_ on the printer bed - clean clothes from a dryer, homework, dolls, chocolate cake, hay from the hamsters, hamsters eating chocolate cake...

A real risk of a nasty fire.

Musk tried to wriggle out of Autopilot grilling by claiming past boasts may be deepfakes

What's in a name?

If you call it Autopilot, someone might expect it to be an autopilot. Dangerous name.

If Apple's environmental rhetoric is meaningful, Macs and iPads should converge

If we cared about the environment

... we'd still be using first generation iPads, and the latest software and websites would still work on them.

Only iPhone 15 Pro models will have higher data transfer speeds on USB-C – analyst

Re: Coby > Apple

There's one advantage to USB-C no-one is talking about. The end with the power in it is female!

Lightning is the only modern power cable I know with exposed metal terminals.

People still seem to think their fancy cars are fully self-driving

Absolutely. As several have pointed out, it's reckless for car manufacturers to use terms the suggest it can do more for you. "Auto pilot" is the most stupid name for it. Of course people believe it will drive for them - because the manufacturers told them that with the name of the feature.

AI's most convincing conversations are not what they seem

Slightly disrespectful to the Labrador. Many lovesick human teenagers put on a superb show of deep longing and immense unrequited need but are actually animals of prodigious and insatiable appetite.

Cars in driver-assist mode hit a third of cyclists, all oncoming cars in tests

Was it a fair test?

"The cyclist and vehicle targets were both lightweight and designed to be harmless to the test vehicle and driver."

Was the radar able to spot them? Were the cars guilty of crashing into cardboard boxes?

Having said that, we already have TMS - Too Much Software, and AI should only take over when proven to be safer than the average human.

Immediate solution - rename these shoddy AI systems. Why are Tesla allowed to call it AutoPilot? No wonder their owners think it will do everything. Trade descriptions.

Ransomware plows through farm machinery giant AGCO

I was just looking at tractors

Who?

Russia? March 2022 - "AGCO Agriculture Foundation Donates to Ukraine Emergency Relief" - https://www.fendt.com/int/agco-agriculture-foundation-donates-to-ukraine-emergency-rel

And then there's John Deere who have interesting business practices - https://www.freeict.eu/news/john-deere-restrictive-practices-hinder-maintenance-for-farmers - despite calling themselves "one of World's Most Ethical Companies". See some of the comments on https://forums.theregister.com/forum/all/2022/05/02/ukrainian_tractors_deere/

UK Government? "Tory MP's friend 'can see' how he went from tractors to p*rn site" - https://metro.co.uk/2022/05/01/tory-mps-friend-can-see-how-he-went-from-tractors-to-porn-site-16566918/

Or just some chancers.

What?

I would be very surprised if the outages only impact their production systems.

Star loses $500,000 NFT after crooks exploit Rarible market

Star loses $500,000

Surely star loses $500,000 by purchasing an NFT?

Hooking up to Starlink might be pricier than you thought

No-one likes price increases, but SpaceX have done more to cut launch costs than anyone else. Why are NASA using them to get to the ISS? Because they are reliable and cheap. So instead of being subsidised by tax payers they are actually saving the tax payer money. Of course the biggest saving would be to defund space, but that's a different question.

Starlink has plenty of competition. There's the traditional satellite internet proviers, who are expensive and have restrictive monthly data caps. But the biggest competition is the traditional earth based telecoms providers. They could have provided fast broadband to every person on the planet but decided that excessive profits and asking governments to subsidise their networks was more important. They could have expanded their wire, fibre, or mobile networrks to cover everyone. But apparently it costs more to dig a trench and lay some wires to the nearest town than it does for Elon to concieve, design, manufacture, and launch thousands of satellites which provide amazing connections.

Microsoft brings Jenny, Aria, and more interface tweaks to new Windows 11 Insider build

Landfill

With their installed base it does seem almost evil to stop supporting gazillions of devices which will end up in the ground, instead of working on making your OS more efficient.

You might want to consider the cost of not upgrading legacy tech, UK's Department for Work and Pensions told

Indeed, most of the fault lies with politcians trying to buy votes from an ever more precise segment of the population. Or whatever the Daily Mail printed this morning.

As for new systems being better than old systems, let's just consider a few headlines over the years - see ElRegs passim.

Clearview's selfie-scraping AI facial recognition technology set to be patented

GDPR

“downloading by a web crawler facial images of individuals and personal information associated therewith; and storing the downloaded facial images and associated personal information in the database.”

Sounds a lot like the opening statement in a legal case against a company alleged to have broken Europe's GDPR.

AWS admits cloud ain't always the answer, intros on-prem vid-analysing box

Who doesn't want their data in the cloud?

Governments and other organisations who might be analysing / tracking people they shouldn't.

Got enterprise workstations and hope to run Windows 11? Survey says: You lose. Over half the gear's not fit for it

Re: Environmental homicide

Aww someone gave them a certificate. https://query.prod.cms.rt.microsoft.com/cms/api/am/binary/RE2Bv1s

Environmental homicide

Microsoft aren't personally trucking millions of machines to landfill, but they are pushing them on their way.

When will their corporate responsibility annual statement start measuring the tonnes of gear which their upgrades obsoleted? https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/corporate-responsibility

And don't get me started on the vast tracts of human time wasted.

In space, no one can hear cyber security professionals scream

Re: Obscurity

Exactly. After some keen amateur decoded video from SpaceX experimental launches the company decided to encrypt their comms. https://www.redorbit.com/spacex-begins-encrypting-telemetry-data-from-rocket-launches/

More cracks found in Russian annex of the International Space Station

Re: "applied two kilograms of hermetal along all the seams"

"but there's something about a jet of boiling water that I can't put my finger on."

I see what you did there

"He said tank, not boiler, so I'd assume from that it's an unpressurised, insulated storage vessel, not a pressurised boiler."

Yes exactly that. Copper tank, and unpressurised (vented to the attic). Managed to get a pinprick hole while trying to undo the massive thread on the element and folded the thin tank skin slightly. It was a very fine jet of quite hot water. Took a while to notice the wet patch downstairs and realise there was a hole. Was off to a Java training course (those were the days) and didn't want to leave the family without hot water. Water is a demon.

"applied two kilograms of hermetal along all the seams"

I used metal putty on my domestic hot water tank ten years ago and I can report it works great.

I won't leave earth without packing some!

Facebook: Let us tell you WhatsApp – we don't want to pay that €225m GDPR fine

Your data is worth $40

"The WhatsApp acquisition closed at a steep $16 billion; more than $40 per user of the platform"

and they aren't going to run it as a public service. They want our data and reckon it is worth more than $40 each.

'Vast majority of people' are onside with a data grab they know next to nothing about, reckons UK health secretary

Is Hancock out of prison already?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-56125462

https://inews.co.uk/opinion/matt-hancock-pandemic-ppe-contracts-good-law-project-881736

He's a born liar

New lawsuit: Why do Android phones mysteriously exchange 260MB a month with Google via cellular data when they're not even in use?

Re: Missing the point? - nope

You make a couple of good points.

- A lot of telemetry is used to improve products. Microsoft used usage stats from Office when deciding which icons to put first on the Ribbon (hated because of the way it was rolled out but overall beneficial).

- Google is providing this stuff for free. We should be paying for great maps but don't have to. Quid pro quo.

Maybe if platforms and advertisers were more careful to hide the clear link between what pages we visit on one site and the ads we see the next site, we wouldn't be so suspicious.