Posts by BOFH in Training

BOFH: Just because we've had record revenues doesn't mean you get a Xmas bonus

Re: Ah, "the bonus situation"

Yeah was thinking the same when the bonus situation was mentioned.

They better be fast before some alien bursts out of their chests!

Europe says Adobe's $20B buy of Figma will kill competition

Re: Remember Macromedia

Affinity has decent photoshop / illustrator / indesign competitors. And they are of the pay once / use forever (until your OS is not supported, presumably) style. And alot cheaper, compared to Adobe.

I only use 2 out of the 3 softwares Affinity provides, but I paid for all 3 (they are very very cheap comparatively) so that Affinity has just that bit more cash on hand to do the good fight against Adobe.

And yes, I was a fan of Macromedia's DW and FW those days.

Woman jailed after RentaHitman.com assassin turned out to be – surprise – FBI

Re: notifying the FBI National Threat Operations Center

I recall reading a similar story sometime ago about someone else using that site.

My understanding is that the FBI is aware of this site and it's actual function. And so they are perfectly fine with the site's operator, especially since they get to catch the occasional stupid wannabe criminals / criminals thru that site.

Western Digital execs vote to split biz in two: HDD and flash

Re: So the two new companies will be HGST and San Disk right?

Wasn't the DeathStar from IBM?

Russia hustles to fill impending void left by the ISS

Russia can be as modern / superb as it's leader(s) allows it to be.

It has alot of resources and know how. Even has alot of educated (and not educated) people as a workforce to work in many different things. It was even doing reasonably well economically (compared to the rest of the world - with everyone in the process of recovering from covid).

It could even have taken advantage of China's total lockdown to get some investors over to start manufacturing (and doing other stuff) within Russia. Of course it may have to improve it's rule of law abit (but it wasn't all that worst when compared to China).

But instead Putin had to start shit and get most of the rest of the world pissed at him and his country. And now most of Russia's resources are being used to fight in Ukraine, when even half of that could have made Russia into a more powerful country economically.

I don't think Putin/Russia will recover from this any time soon. Huge brain drain, any educated male(and females) who wants a future and has a chance is hoofing it out of there.

There is even speculation that after Putin is gone (he is old and I don't think he is immortal) that Russia may break up (just like the old Soviet Union). Not sure I like that idea, with all the nukes and other stuff there, but if that's what happens, that's what will happen. Maybe if we are lucky, if there is another break up like the SU, hopefully the nukes and other gear will still be relatively safe.

Roscosmos is a recrutment ground for the Russian armed forces.

https://arstechnica.com/space/2023/06/it-appears-that-roscosmos-really-is-recruiting-soldiers-for-the-ukraine-war/

Not sure if they will be put in some sort of support capacity (tank mechanic, etc) or actual meat for the grinder.

It actually makes sense - less launches, less space stuff being done, more men in Roscosmos presumably free and hanging around.

Re: Russian President Vladimir Putin has approved a project to build an Orbital Station

That makes the Soviet space tech even more impressive, since they can / are still being used till now, with at most some relatively minor modifications.

Ex-NSA techie pleads guilty to selling state secrets to Russia

Re: Security Engineer, indeed

I know someone who has very basic computing knowledge (able to use Windows, MS Office, and other business applications) who was offered a job as a IT Security Engineer or Cyber Security Engineer (forgot the exact term).

That person got a better paying job in the end, but I always joked with my friend about how he could have been a IT / Cyber security engineer with no actual related skills.

I understood later that he would have been involved in getting access to authorised people, and presumably removing access to people who left / no longer need access. Both for accessing data / applications as well as door entry and such.

In other words, the titles may not actually give a clear understanding of the job scope.

Amazon to drop a cool $1B on Microsoft 365 cloud suite

Yeah especially since Amazon, as one of the biggest orgs in the world, can demand suppliers use LO or whatever they develop if they need to send Amazon any documentation.

That script I wrote three years ago is now doing what? How many times?

Re: On the flip side

I have known too many people who got the paper (diploma / degree) in CS, but hated CS after a while cos things change too fast for them to cope with (regardless hardware, programming [languages / frameworks / IDE / etc] or just the general threadmill of keeping up with whats going on within your scope). They got it cos it sounded like a good way to make decent money, not cos they were interested in computing in any form.

I rather take someone who has an interest and migrated from another industry / self taught then someone who may have the paper but not the interest. No doubt there are many who got the paper because they got the interest, but not all of the paper holders are that.

China requires any new domestic Wi-Fi kit to support IPv6 and run it by default

Re: Big Brother is watching

Yeah was wondering why only wifi devices and not just all devices which connect to networks - regardless wifi or not.

After all there are many devices sold which connect to networks via ethernet, etc and not have wifi functionality (some IPCAM devices come to mind offhand).

Can open source be saved from the EU's Cyber Resilience Act?

And what if you happen to be away on a sabbatical for a month and did not check your emails / bug tracker?

Will it matter if someone reported an issue during the first week of your holiday but you did not see it for another 3 weeks? Even if it was being actively exploited from the very first day it was reported?

There are many questions about this that has to be answered.

City council Oracle megaproject got a code red – and they went live anyway

Why did they kill off the existing SAP system before Oracle system could fully take over?

Russia to ban all VPNs – again – says senator

Well, it may help to push the other international businesses who are still operating within Russia to leave Russia.

No VPN connections allowed from Russia to the main office networks?

Ops, can't do work / earn money - so maybe finally time to leave?

Human knocks down woman in hit-and-run. Then driverless Cruise car parks on top of her

Re: My first thought ...

I expect that video to leak out into reddit soon.

Have they seen the videos that you see in various reddit forums? From Ukraine war related videos (unedited raw footage) to various accident / crime videos.

Yes, Singapore immigration plans to scan your face instead of your passport

Singapore immigration is usually a breeze

I have flown thru Changi Airport, last maybe 9 months ago.

And I had occasion to cross the land bridge into Malaysia as well, some months ago.

Both times, Singapore immigration was a breeze (Malaysia immigration at the land bridge was atrocious as I recall - all manual, hardly any counters open, hours to travel the bridge which is only about 1km across, due to the jam from Malaysian customs). Actually saw alot of people holding different types of passports going thru the biometric gantries. 30 secs maybe to get thru the immigration. Hardly any queue.

I imagine facial recognition systems will make it even smoother.

Wonder if it will be possible to have cameras on the aero bridge from the aircraft which automatically record your entry as you exit the aircraft and maybe tagging you / your pic to an immigration officer if it did not work automatically for them to approach you and do the manual immigration. Can't say it's a privacy issue since they already record your entry with your passport currently and presumably you are recorded by 100s if not 1000s of cameras from the moment you exit the aircraft till you exit the airport (or from entry of airport till entry of aircraft).

The home Wi-Fi upgrade we never asked for is coming. The one we need is not

Re: Whoops !!!

Exactly, I have never used the ISP supplied router, even when it was "free". They are generally passed on to someone else in need of an emergency / temp router if their main router gives up the ghost (rare, but it happens).

Actually am in the process of changing someone else's ISP supplied router, which can't even do proper port forwarding.

ISPs should just ask the end user if they want a router - will probably end up saving alot of gear from being junked.

Getting to the bottom of BMW's pay-as-you-toast subscription failure

Re: don't forget

Isn't Boeing facing the same issue now?

Engineering led at one time, now led by bean counters / marketers?

School for semiconductors? Arm tries to address chip talent shortages

Your experience seems pretty specific to the UK.

I think if you were interested in moving out of the UK, the outlook would have been better.

But that would also have been brain drain that the UK can ill afford.

Oracle's revised Java licensing terms 2-5x more expensive for most orgs

And if the call centre works for multiple clients, thats multiple clients paying licence for the call centre?

Heh.

No Oracle anything in anywhere I work in which I have a say in.

Stolen Microsoft key may have opened up a lot more than US govt email inboxes

List of orgs

Am still trying to find a list of orgs which may have their emails or other stuff leaked due to this.

Chinese malware intended to infect USB drives accidentally infects networked storage too

Re: What operating system ?

No doubt there is some linux malware around. Just like there is macOS malware, etc.

Am just responding to your previous comment where you stated that malware is created for windows cos of it's widespread use.

And I am pointing out that unless you / your org is specifically targeted by someone with large amounts of resources, it's very unlikely that you will get infected with linux malware, compared to a general windows running org.

If you are being specifically targeted by someone who has alot of resources, I think malware will be the least of your problems.

Re: What operating system ?

I guess orgs like google who use Linux as their internal desktop OS are very safe.

https://www.computerworld.com/article/3668548/the-story-behind-google-s-in-house-desktop-linux.html

I have even heard of some other smaller orgs using Linux as a desktop OS as well.

Techie wasn't being paid, until he taught HR a lesson

Re: Unique keys

Names are complicated. Cos of all the differences in culture, language, spelling, etc. Some having one word names (Indonesia comes to mind), some having no surnames / family names, some having multiple ways of spelling them, etc. Not to mention names with -/, and other characters.

I normally just try to have a single field for the whole name. Around 200 - 255 characters length.

Works out generally.

BOFH: Cough up half a grand and we'll protect you from AI

Wonder if Russian FSB got the idea for the window divers from BOFH......

Mark Zuckerberg would kick Elon Musk's ass, experts say

Re: So who would win?

I would like them both to kick the snot out of each other and both ko together.

That would be worth even paying for it.

Microsoft has made Azure Linux generally available. Repeat, Azure Linux

Re: Azure

Yeah I remember that.

I found a few relevant links about the hotmail migration :

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/12/how-hotmail-changed-microsoft-and-email-forever/

Took them about a decade, according to that link.

How do you boost server efficiency? Buy new kit, keep it busy

What type of workload on what type of servers?

They mention 2 CPU brands and 2 types of servers and workloads (sample transaction processing).

But a server consists more then just a CPU - accessories like GPUs, NICs, etc, and even the different motherboards have different power draw and capabilities.

They may be right for that specific workloads with a server optimised for that function. Not sure about other types of servers optimised for other workloads / other features.

I do agree that it is crazy to keep a server at below 50% continuously - that means they overspecced, unless they plan to grow the load in the near future.

Hong Kong tries to outlaw uploads of unofficial and anti-Beijing anthem

There were some articles about some cops quitting or refusing to come on duty during the protests.

I assume all those who were concerned about freedom and similar concepts are out of the police force and they have recruited from China's own police force to make sure all the current police officers behave patriotically (to China).

Singapore to double its submarine cable landing sites by 2033

10gbps infrastructure?

Further on the agenda is to upgrade domestic hard infrastructure to support 10-gigabit speeds within the next five years, with an eye on achieving smooth handovers across modes of delivery. <--- I don't understand this part.

There are at least 2 ISPs (maybe more) who offer 10gbps (symmetrical) to the home thru fiber in Singapore (about 100 USD monthly), with no caps.

So what is that in the article about hard infrastructure supporting 10gbps speed?

The challenges Intel faces to compete with TSMC, Samsung

Re: Tape out costs

I assume Intel will be it's own customer if there are no others willing to do risk production.

After all Intel will need to use 20A node for it's CPUs/GPUs as well eventually. If and when production is stable, there may be others willing to become intel's customers for that node.

This ain't Boeing very well: Starliner's first crewed flight canceled yet again

Or Intel and AMD - with Intel having to give a licence to x86 to AMD so that IBM will award the CPU contract to Intel.

Big organisations / governments sometimes try to get a second source supplier, in case the primary supplier can't perform.

So presumably Boeing was the primary (and legacy) and SpaceX was the secondary supplier. And when Boeing, the primary supplier could not perform, NASA is not stuck waiting cos SpaceX could perform.

Cancelled or postponed?

Thought it was postponed and not cancelled?

Cancelling this will be bigger news. Postponement is pretty much not unexpected from Boeing currently.

And there are rumours that they may have to cancel eventually if they don't want to lose a bunch more money.

Happens when it's a fixed price contract, unlike the cost plus contracts they are used to.

Nearly 1 in 5 academics admit close encounters of the anomalous kind

Re: Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.

Problem is, 40 years ago, a photo or video may have been considered as sufficient proof.

Now, almost any image or video can be manipulated or even created from scratch. So yeah, proof has to be extraordinary enough so that most people will not claim it was faked.

Re: Cool

Doubt they will come here for resources since I doubt we have any special unobtainium resources that you can't get elsewhere easily.

If you can travel even a couple of light years at a reasonable speed(not even necessarily at light speed), you can probably grab all the resources you need peacefully, assuming you don't have a way to convert energy into whatever material you need in the first place. Something like a very partial dyson swarm will probably give you enough energy to do alot of energy to matter conversion. no matter how inefficient it may be.

Why do we explore our world? Why do we send probes and humans to the deepest parts of our world? It's unlikely we can extract any resources from 11km below sea level in the mariana trench anytime soon, yet we explore.

Why is that not enough reason for some other being wanting to visit here? And if they visited, they may be just like us, observing indigenous peoples with limited or no contact.

At least until we have proven that we have outgrown our predilection for greed and aggressive behaviour.

Re: Cool

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. So yeah, any claims of UFO or little green men need alot of proof.

With that said, we are hardly the experts to say what forms life in other planets/asteroids/moons can take, just cos we know of carbon based oxygen breathing life in our home planet. And even on earth we got some very unusual life in very surprising places - such as at the vents of underwater volcanoes, with all the heat and pollution (and you did mention sulphuric acid), etc. Some of the life in such areas dont even need oxygen.

And even now there is debate as to are virus alive. After all they don't even have the traditional machinery we expect in a cell.

So there is even a chance that we may not even recognise life when we see it sometimes cos it is so different from our current experiences and expectations.

We are barely able to get stuff flying around our solar system, and its been decades since we even managed to send a human to our moon. I think that qualifies us as the clueless newbies when it comes to possibilities of space flight and life in space.

No doubt from our limited knowledge and perspective, light speed is a huge problem. Let's wait a couple of centuries till we can actually confidently move humans around the solar system before we claim that there is nothing out there and there is nothing we/anyone/anything can do.

FBI abused spy law but only like 280,000 times in a year

Re: How many for exPresidents

Until the next Snowden or leak happens.

In which case everyone all the way up the chain of command, till the director or general or whoever goes into jail for life for conducting illegal activities and covering it up.

Re: How many for exPresidents

They can have the powers - except once a an abuse is detected, the abuser and the chain of command at least 2 levels up end up in jail. The abuser for abusing, the chain of command for improper supervision / training.

Otherwise, you dont need those powers.

One of the world's most prominent blockchain apps looks like being binned

Re: Blockchain not at fault

Blockchain is not at fault in this case.

The fault lies on the idiots who decided to chase the latest buzzword without investigating if it's actually suitable for their needs. I must admit blockchain sounds interesting, but I don't think it will be of use in most places. Maybe in some very specific niches it will find a role.

Just cos you hear how great a hammer is, it does not mean it fits every role you may throw at it.

Phones' facial recog tech 'fooled' by low-res 2D photo

Until you got AI generating the holo images and mimicking someone else.

;)

Ex-Twitter sextet sues Elon Musk for 'stiffing' them on severance

Re: He really has adopted the Trump deadbeat playbook

Bigger creditors, like those who own buildings worth many millions or more, can probably afford 100k to a million on lawyers and will probably also demand the cost of the lawyers in the end.

I don't think Musk can win those by just saying "NO".

BOFH: Ah. Company-branded merch. So much better than a bonus

When do people understand that cash rules?

CASH always rules. Stupid crap that a company gives away is almost always gathering dust soon after.

When will manglement understand that?

CEO sorry after telling staff to 'leave pity city' over bonuses

Re: Whos foot is that? BANG!! Ouch.. shit...

This sounds like one of the reddit stories.

You come across so much similar stupidity from so many companies in so many industries.

After that, the goose that laid the golden eggs (to well paid senior managment) suddenly find that they killed their company with their greed / stupidity.

I only heard of one company where the senior managment took a pay cut for a while so that they didn't have to cut the pay /reduce headcount of the lower levels.

Wish more company senior managment is like that.

Fancy trying the granddaddy of Windows NT for free? Now's your chance

Re: The modern museum

It's also useful if ransomware encrypts a bunch of files and you can always revert back to a previous unencrypted version.

Or get the original file from a data corruption incident.

Or get back the version which was not accidentally overwritten.

Or get back the file after accidentally deleting it (not really file versioning, but some systems keep a deleted file for X period of time before purging as part of versioning).

I know my Synology NAS has those functions and it's proven useful when someone does something boneheaded.

April Patch Tuesday: Ransomware gangs already exploiting this Windows bug

Although am not handling any Windows based devices professionally right now, I probably will have a brief look at the CVEs to make sure nothing in my home is affected. Or needs to be patched.

Don't worry, most IT professionals should at least an idea of wtf is coming out from MS patch Tuesdays. So you are not alone ;)

Python head hisses at looming Euro cybersecurity rules

Re: Something needs to be done to protect consumers

Fred is liable even for errors in Linux that cause his software to misfunction. He's also liable for such misfunction caused by errors in llvm. And its libraries.

-----

You sure you don't want anyone to use OSS at all in any commercial product cos they will be liable if something happens in the OSS component?

There goes all the home routers running Linux. Or many IOT products for that matter.

On another note ....

Doesn't Windows provide Windows Subsystem for Linux to run Linux and stuff? I think it has open source components as well.

So if there is a bug in the open source component, how much is MS going to be liable for? Maybe MS should put a hard stop to interoperating with open source software. I think even the build in ftp client in Windows is OSS.

Isn't Apple using BSD based software for it's kernel or something?

This can get interesting.

Another zero-click Apple spyware maker just popped up on the radar again

If I was an Israeli, I would be concerned

Cos the current government seems hell bent on controlling the justice system there.

If they succeed, it's only a matter of time before such "tools" are used widely against the average person there, considering the courts will be toothless to fight the government.

Sanctions-busting exporters sent $2 billion of tech to Russia through China, Hong Kong, and the UK in 2022

Not surprised at China, HK, even Turjey (not mentioned in the article)

But interesting to note that UK is also in the list.

Wonder if UK government would like to crackdown and make an example of some of them, considering that they are in Ukraine's corner when it comes to Russia.

Amazon to shutter Digital Photography Review

Re: That's a travesty!

There are still times when I have to look at older gear reviews - either because someone can't afford the price of brand new gear or cos they want to get a spare, so don't want the current gear.

Or to make comparisons with newer gear against the older gear (in terms of specs, quality, etc).

I think the reviews for older gear are still valuable for a number of years after they are made.

And dont forget that the site is not just purely on reviews and has other articles about other relevant stuff (I think one of the last I recall was about camera sensors overview).

Not to mention the forums.

Re: That's a travesty!

Maybe there can be an official torrent of the site put up somewhere.

I don't mind contributing to that for a while if that happens.