* Posts by Will Godfrey

6262 publicly visible posts • joined 8 Sep 2007

UK Home Office silent on alleged Apple backdoor order

Will Godfrey Silver badge
Facepalm

Possible Apple response

Inform all UK users their kit will now be bricked. Inform rest of world users that if they take their kit to the UK it will also be bricked.

I think Apple could afford that - it wouldn't need to last very long. The Home Office would be buried under attacks from a lot of people with huge-mungus financial means.

UK industry leaders unleash hurricane-grade scale for cyberattacks

Will Godfrey Silver badge
Unhappy

Get out of jail free Monoply card?

That's what it looks like to me. An extra way for insurance companies to weasel out of paying up.

Eggheads crack the code for the perfect soft boil

Will Godfrey Silver badge
Alert

Re: Before boiling

WHAT!!!

Are you telling me there are still Little-Endians! I thought they'd all died out attempting to compromise the endien-ness by trying to make perfectly spherical ones.

Mixing Rust and C in Linux likened to cancer by kernel maintainer

Will Godfrey Silver badge
Unhappy

Attitude

In my (very limited) exposure to Rusticans I find them almost all of an arrogant nature. That sets off warning alarms in my mind. I wouldn't want to have to deal with them.

Palantir designed to 'power the West to its obvious innate superiority,' says CEO

Will Godfrey Silver badge
Unhappy

Sombody stop the earth

I want to get off and go somewhere sane. Any alien ship will do.

DeepSeek spills Big AI's open secret: Bright people with good ideas can beat billion dollar binges

Will Godfrey Silver badge
Happy

My face hurts

That's because I haven't stopped grinning since the news about Deep Seek first surfaced.

US senator wants to slap prison term, $1M fine on anyone aiding Chinese AI with ... downloads?

Will Godfrey Silver badge
Facepalm

Insanity

The USA is definitely in the Asylum now.

... and it looks like the UK is volunteering to pay the rent!

UK biz dept overspent by £208M prepping to pay workers hurt in Post Office IT scandal

Will Godfrey Silver badge
Unhappy

They still don't get it.

Personally I think 75k is a derisory sum considering what these PO victims have suffered over the years.

P.S.

Oh, and how do you compensate those that are dead - I bet their families don't get as much as a stale crust.

What does it mean to build in security from the ground up?

Will Godfrey Silver badge

Which way round

Do you specify what isn't permitted,or what is permitted. If it's the former you risk missing new attack types, but if it's the latter use get frustrated with the restrictions and verifying new stuff can become complicated.

DeepSeek's not the only Chinese LLM maker OpenAI and pals have to worry about. Right, Alibaba?

Will Godfrey Silver badge
Alert

Hilarious

I strongly suspect this is only the beginning. China is racing ahead in many ways, and while people used to put them down for low quality knock-offs, it seems they were using that as a stepping stone and are now designing and building stuff that's ahead of the game. Batteries and cars are good examples of their progress.They are not exactly slouches with space technology either.

"Interesting" times ahead!

Google Maps to roll out Trump-approved Denali and Gulf of Mexico rebrands

Will Godfrey Silver badge
Coat

Re: What's in a name...

I don't know who this "We" are you're talking about. For as long as I can remember I, and all my family have just called it "The Channel".

P.S.

... and I can remember things back as far as the early 1950s.

DeepSeek limits new accounts amid cyberattack

Will Godfrey Silver badge
Black Helicopters

What a surprise

I wonder who could possibly be behind for such an attack. I doubt it'd be some script-kiddy in a darkened room.

Robots in schools, care homes next? This UK biz hopes to make that happen

Will Godfrey Silver badge
WTF?

Ugh!

Personally, I can't think of anything more horrific. That's all!

China's DeepSeek just emitted a free challenger to OpenAI's o1 – here's how to use it on your PC

Will Godfrey Silver badge
Boffin

Interesting

It certainly seems to be a serious challenger. I'm not surprised about the censorship. However, although not having tried one from any other source, I would expect some form a censorship from all of them.

Linux rolls out the welcome mat for Microsoft's Copilot key

Will Godfrey Silver badge
Alert

Obvious

It should install a script that generates random words and returns them to any{spit} AI that tries to scrape your data.

It should then remove itself.

AI pothole patrol to snap flaws in Britain's crumbling roads

Will Godfrey Silver badge
Joke

Re: AI?

There really is artificial intelligence involved - it exists in the heads of the council wonks... certainly can't be regarded as real intelligence!

Will Godfrey Silver badge
Unhappy

And then there's kent roads

Every time I've had to change car tyres in the last mmmfty mmf years it's been due to a pot hole, seemingly cleverly placed just after a bend in the road and/or disguised by fallen leaves on a water filled chasm. I can't remember a time when any of them had to be changed through actually being worn out!

Windows Insiders can now turn on Administrator Protection from settings

Will Godfrey Silver badge
FAIL

Indeed. Clearly from the "You couldn't make it up" department!

In farewell speech, Biden rails against the tech industrial complex, disinfo dismantling democracy

Will Godfrey Silver badge
Unhappy

Hmm.

Can someone help me here. I don't seem to be able to find any IT/Tech content from the commentards in this topic.

Tesla recalls 239,382 vehicles over rearview camera problems

Will Godfrey Silver badge
Happy

Re: will be able to get their car computer replaced free of charge

Actually, sometimes they are designed to 'fail' S/C specifically to protect everything by blowing the fuse - We call them crowbar circuits.

Will Godfrey Silver badge
Unhappy

I'd go further and say that neither the software nor the hardware had been designed properly... or maybe not designed at all, but just thrown together.

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

Will Godfrey Silver badge
Facepalm

Re: Transparency

There's always one, isn't there? Funny how it's also always an A/C

That was some serious effort the hackers had to go to, and although they managed to interfere with the chip's operation, they weren't able to do so in a way that exposed anything useful.

FBI wipes Chinese PlugX malware from thousands of Windows PCs in America

Will Godfrey Silver badge
Unhappy

The Entire World "knew" that Iraq had "Weapons of Mass Destruction" (tm) but after wiping out entire cities and killing thousands of completely innocent CIVILIANS, none were found. Try as they might, the aggressors couldn't invent find any.

I'm sure it's a pure co-incidence that Iraq has major oil fields.

Will Godfrey Silver badge
Coat

Re: Scary

I am both surprised and disappointed by the number of commentards that seem to think this is OK.

Presumably they're not of the "Bite the hand that feeds IT" ilk :(

Will Godfrey Silver badge
Big Brother

Scary

Regardless of the intent for this case, is anyone else a bit disturbed by the idea of America unilaterally wiping software from other peoples computers?

If they remove something, might they not also put 'a little something' back in there?

Intel, AMD engineers rush to save Linux 6.13 after dodgy Microsoft code change

Will Godfrey Silver badge
Coat

Re: Surprise?

What Poettering does begins with a 'w' and ends with a 'k' but the other letters are not 'o' and 'r'.

Nominet probes network intrusion linked to Ivanti zero-day exploit

Will Godfrey Silver badge
Holmes

Choice wording

'No evidence' of data theft doesn't automatically mean it hasn't happened.

Europe hopes Trump trumps Biden's plan for US to play AI gatekeeper

Will Godfrey Silver badge
Coat

Hmmm

I'm not persuaded that restriction would be a bad thing. I'm sick of hearing about AI. It, and it's supporters seem to behave like a particularly virulent disease, consuming it's host from inside.

Linus Torvalds offers to build guitar effects pedal for kernel developer

Will Godfrey Silver badge

Re: Hmmm

Who could forget them!

Mind you, they're still popular in some circles.

Will Godfrey Silver badge
Happy

Hmmm

I've lost track of the number of pedals I've built for various people over the years - right back to fuzz boxes based on Germanium diodes. No two have been the same. Wah pedals got quite 'interesting' as did compressors. Digital reverb/echo units were a lot of fun - especially when you put the reverb time on a pedal pot.

Don't do any of that these days.

Nvidia snaps back at Biden's 'innovation-killing' AI chip export restrictions

Will Godfrey Silver badge
Facepalm

Wot?

I'm not keen on (so called) AI at all, but if we must have it I don't want any country to have overall control of it.

Haiku Beta 5 / In tests it's (Fire)foxier / It pleases us well

Will Godfrey Silver badge
Thumb Up

Re: It's a nice toy.

Funny you mentioned the Pi. That was the first thing that I thought of when reading this.

Never mind those Chinese spies: US Air Force picks Verizon for 35 base network upgrades

Will Godfrey Silver badge
Facepalm

Breaking up?

I think it's those burying their heads in the sand that are at risk of breaking up

Elon Musk's galactic ego sows chaos in European politics

Will Godfrey Silver badge
Facepalm

Re: A week is a long time in politics…

So did these gangs spontaneously self generate when Labour took over?

Is it possible they developed during the Conservative Government decades.

Tired of begging, Microsoft now trying to trick users into thinking Bing is Google

Will Godfrey Silver badge
Unhappy

Re: Don't Act Shocked - This is basic Microsoft at it's core

Actually, I can't remember a time when they did compete on merit.

Eutelsat OneWeb blames 366th day for 48-hour date disaster

Will Godfrey Silver badge
Happy

Re: ... And that's why

I did roll my own once, but that was on an Arduino yonks ago.

It didn't stay like that. I popped the chip out, and inserted it into the custom PCB that we made for a factory shift notification system. The time source was a GPS module. The control system was in the production manager's office and consisted of a number of very solid buttons, and an LCD screen behind a 1/4 inch thick perspex shield. About three years later the factory was bought out and closed - make what you like of that :P

Will Godfrey Silver badge
Facepalm

Clearly from the "You couldn't make it up" dept.

I think it was something like 40 years ago when I first came across time programs, and the pitfalls were well known even then.

After China's Salt Typhoon, the reconstruction starts now

Will Godfrey Silver badge
Coat

On the face of it that seems a reasonable assumption, but as time goes on, it's going to get increasingly expensive to not take on proper security practices.

coat -> because I want out of this nightmare.

Boffins carve up C so code can be converted to Rust

Will Godfrey Silver badge
Meh

Not impressed

Maybe I've missed something, but I'm unaware of an alternative to pointers when you have time critical code with decision trees that not only have to be fast, but also need fairly consistent execution time.

A New Year's gift from Microsoft: Surprise, your scanners don't work

Will Godfrey Silver badge
Coat

This is not news!

News is:

Microsoft released an upgrade that worked flawlessly on all common devices (and also on many uncommon ones).

Boffins ponder paltry brain data rate of 10 bits per second

Will Godfrey Silver badge
Happy

Re: Thought experiment.

We most sentences the have ability to understand also the with of words in the wrong order.

Eight things that should not have happened last year, but did

Will Godfrey Silver badge
Coat

Re: Crowdstrike?

A trainspotters private vid. collection is more important than Facebook.

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

Will Godfrey Silver badge
Facepalm

I would like to say i was surprised...

But I prefer to tell the truth.

China's cyber intrusions took a sinister turn in 2024

Will Godfrey Silver badge
Facepalm

I see a lot of talking of potential disaster

... but virtually no action.

Will that change? I'm not holding my breath!

OpenAI plans to ring in the New Year with a for-profit push

Will Godfrey Silver badge
Mushroom

Strange Game ...

... only way to win is not to play.

Christmas 1984: The last hurrah for 8-bit home computers

Will Godfrey Silver badge
Pint

Re: Well......

Nice one!

Have one of these :)

Will Godfrey Silver badge
Happy

Re: Glory Days

They also appeal to those of us who like to play/work with computers, rather than on them. (Although we do a bit of that as well)

After a long lunch, user thought a cursor meant their computer was cactus

Will Godfrey Silver badge
Thumb Up

Re: Thank you El Reg

AOL Mode="on"

Me too.