Posts by Will Godfrey

Getting that syncing feeling after an Exchange restore

Re: *FacePalmHappyGroan*

Well it certainly left Windows of opportunity.

What to do about inherent security flaws in critical infrastructure?

Re: it's not all bad

Who said anything about Arduinos etc? I certainly didn't.

It seems the point I was making was totally lost. The kit I was referring was completely self contained and intrinsically secure.Yes, it was old and slow (but so is making cardboard boxes) and it was common for these things to run 24/7. As soon as anything is software controlled you have introduced a weak spot. There are a (vanishingly small) number of PLCs that make this better - writes to the program area are disabled by a mechanical switch on the PLC itself. If there is any outside contact apart from just reading settings there is still the problem of malicious data being injected.

On top of this you get ridiculous passwords used (especially when HEX is required), such as:

0001, 0002, etc, on a series of identical machines.

Then there's the fun ones:

CAFE

ABCD

DEAD

D0D0

Yes. I've seen all of these :(

it's not all bad

In the mid 1990s I was sent to repair a cardboard box maker. The cough logic controller consisted of plug-in modules the size of a house brick with various switches and controls - pretty difficult to compromise I'd say.

Seriously, PLCs have always been a disaster waiting to happen.

SpiralLinux: Anonymous creator of GeckoLinux puts out new Debian remix

Re: Couple of notes

I'm running ROX on devuan - with Openbox as the window manager.

Re: Just a better installer?

"gateway drug to Debian"

Great way to put it. I've been 'addicted' for years!

Everyone back to the office! Why? Because the decision has been made

Re: Scheme

How many time have I heard that... and have also been saying it myself for a few years!

Central bank: Crypto 'derives value based on make believe', threatens financial stability

Re: I agree

Exactly!

I agree

It's as bad as fiat currency. Well, slightly badder.

NASA delays SLS rollback due to concerns over rocky path to launchpad

I'm SO surprised

Actually, I'm lying.

NOBODY PRINT! Selfless hero saves typing pool from carbon catastrophe

Re: Walk and talk

These are the sort of companies I liked to work in. My last one was like that - and when the company moved into bigger premises - basically an empty shell, the (then retired) older boss came in to do all the office/workshop wiring so the rest of us could get on with the on-site calls.

Resurrected Dundee Satellite Station to host quantum Optical Ground Station

Good news indeed

And we could sorely do with more of the same.

One small niggle with the article though.. Fiber? What is that in English? Did you perhaps misspell fibre

Arrogant, subtle, entitled: 'Toxic' open source GitHub discussions examined

Why must a difference of opinion be regarded as hostile?

Particularly regarding code forks. The FLOSS project I'm involved with is a fork, and after more than 10 years both still seem to be going along quite happily in their (now) quite different directions. There is the occasional troll who very publicly asks which they should use. My answer is always "Try both and go with which you prefer".

Start using Modern Auth now for Exchange Online

The whole thing is a worsening nightmare

The authentication 'experts' must all live in big city cocoons. Having a phone as part of the authentication is crazy. I can't rely on being able to authenticate when using a venue's internet just outside London (or sometimes even inside) if there is no phone service.

Also, for years I could get by with a credit card and just a few pounds in cash. Now I have to take a wodge of cash, again in case there's no phone access for card authorisation.

Even if all that is good. It's still not secure. It's not the phone that's the ID it's the information held on the SIM... which can be faked.

AMD targeted by RansomHouse, attackers claim to have '450Gb' in stolen data

Re: "Reached out"?

Indeed. I always regard that expression as retching

China's blockchain boosters slam crypto as Ponzi scheme

Interesting

They're saying exactly what I thought as soon as I heard about it. Then again I expect world + dog did too. Just that some thought they could use it to scam everyone else.

Software-defined silicon is coming for telecom kit later this year

I have a latency problem

Not yet halfway through the day, but already all my own concerns have been identified by earlier commentards.

AWS sent edgy appliance to the ISS and it worked – just like all the other computers up there

Desperation

That's how this comes over to me - Oh, and extreme attention seeking.

Original Acorn Arthur project lead explains RISC OS genesis

Re: Whoo-hoo!

Personally, I preferred Impression.

Wi-Fi hotspots and Windows on Arm broken by Microsoft's latest patches

In other news

Dog bites man

BOFH: Tech helps HR investigate the Boss's devices

A thing of beauty

Skewered HR - BBQ ready!

EV battery can reach full charge in 'less than 10 minutes'

Re: Full charge in 10 minutes?

Also consider that the kids (on low wages) have to first find the deposit on a house purchase to be able to get on the mortgage ladder - to say nothing of the risk of losing their job through no fault of their own, and having to move to where the work is.

Cable cut blamed for global four-hour internet disruption

But not for much longer, or hadn't you heard. As far as reliability and sound quality is concerned we're being forced for^H^H^H backwards with BT's dash for VOIP only.

Ampere: Cloud biz buy-ins prove our Arm server CPUs are the real deal

Certainly looks interesting

I never did really understand why, once they had multiple cores, Intel and AMD went down the shared cache, FPU, etc. avenue. It seems a no-brainer that it was liable to cause contention issues.

New York to get first right-to-repair law for electronics

D.I.Y.

My entire family do as much repair as is possible (and legally permitted). The list of things we actually can repair, and do so economically, is steadily shrinking. The next generation is going to have a tough time.

Taiwan claims ‘breakthrough’ in EU semiconductor cooperation talks

No Surprise

It rather looks as if everyone is is now expecting China to invade at some point, so setting up bolt-holes for the Taiwanese to scarper to.

Newport Wafer Fab could be sold to US consortium – report

Well, we seem to have long track record of selling anything of value.

When management went nuclear on an innocent software engineer

Well Done Ellen

Obviously one of those people who can actually think on their feet - and endangered species!

BOFH: Where do you think you are going with that toner cartridge?

And Friday is now all good

I don't think I need to say why!

UK opens national security probe into 2021 sale of local wafer fab to Chinese company

Re: Process nodes

Hmmm. That's beggining to encroach on Ignitron territory.

(for the youngsters)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignitron

P,S. although they are 'switch on' only devices.

The rest of the time we are certain that's the case.

Seriously, you do not want to make that cable your earth

Re: building earthed through ThickNet

... and are you sure nobody is going to read down this far?

Re: ITN

After the wedding they took a light circuit round the guests before an ohm run to the bedroom.

Sparkies

Nothing changes. These are the sort of people who wire up your homes, because we are not considered competent to do it.

Does that make you feel safe?

P.S.

I could probably provide a laundry list of all the dodgy stuff I've seen done by apparently qualified electricians.

New audio server Pipewire coming to next version of Ubuntu

Re: A new Linux standard?

Sooner or later, someone would have to produce a standards cartoon to replace all the others...

However...

If you're working specifically on audio creation you absolutely don't want some stupid audio notification jingle in the middle of a 30 minute recording.

Mind you, I never want those anyway.

Foxconn factory fiasco could leave Wisconsinites on the hook for $300m

Re: Other options besides LCD?

You spelled NiFe wrong

China-linked Twisted Panda caught spying on Russian defense R&D

Am I surprised?

Is the pope a Catholic? etc.

Will this be one of the world's first RISC-V laptops?

Re: Some serious questions.

It's also likely to be more 'honest'. It will be harder to hide little extras in it - although obviously not impossible.

The sad state of Linux desktop diversity: 21 environments, just 2 designs

As you read this comment you get the uncanny feeling it's only function is to discover if commentards actually read this far down the list.

Re: I want a window manager for a 40 inch monitor

Clearly what you really need is a smaller monitor. I'd be prepared to swap (if you ask nicely)

If only...

If someone ported a fully functional version of RISC OS to Linux I've be the happiest bunny in the world.

Re: Compatibility and elephants

I still use ROX (with the Open Box window manager). It works as it did baring a few applications. Unfortunately nobody is maintaining it so eventually it will die :(

GPL legal battle: Vizio told by judge it will have to answer breach-of-contract claims

Re: There Oughta Be a Law

Indeed. Described as 'Not fit for purpose'

Software patching must work like car safety recalls, says US cyber boss

Hmmm

Perhaps the gentleman would like to define precisely who he regards as the 'Vendor'.

Your software doesn't work when my PC is in 'O' mode

I find this totally belevable

As an impressionable teenager, my first proper job was home-visits TV servicing. I was permanently scarred by the 'unbelievable' things I saw. Bare wires stuffed in the old 15A unswitched round pin sockets for starters!

"Well you see, it saves messing about when you've got lots of things you want on at the same time"

Re: Saw that coming

Same here - having dealt with many 'I' mode problems over the decades, and even the occasional 'O' mode that wasn't - sticking contactor comes to mind leaving one phase connected... 'interesting' results.

Problems for the Linux kernel NTFS driver as author goes silent

Re: Nitpick

Indeed. Seeing as you 'Pull' code from a repository, a 'Pull Request' is about as obvious as it gets.

BOFH: Something's consuming 40% of UPS capacity – and it's coming from the beancounters' office

Re: The security system

There's no way I'd even enter an area like that (assuming of course I was able to discover that was the case)

Cloudflare stomps huge DDoS attack on crypto platform

Even fleas have fleas on their backs to bite 'em.