Posts by that one in the corner

Fixing an upside-down USB plug: A case of supporting the insupportable

Re: Upside down 3.5" floppies

5"? Mine were all 5 1/4" - when your floppy is that small, the extra 1/4 inch is important!

Re: Upside down 3.5" floppies

Remembering a demo of a pre-production BBC Micro official Acorn floppy disc drive and accompanying DFS ROM.

Chap told us that they'd had to put in both *DISC and *DISK commands - oh, the waste of bytes in a 16K[1] ROM!

[1] if someone wants to correct me on the ROM size (it may have just benn an 8K job), which would make it worse!

Is it time to retire C and C++ for Rust in new programs?

Re: One thing that make me wary of rust

Well, the justification they give for the existence of crates.io explicitly references npm so don't be surprised by such similarities!

https://doc.rust-lang.org/cargo/faq.html

Funky new ecosystems == bleeping annoying to use in an existing environment

Just because you have a fancy new programming paradigm that doesn't mean that it makes sense to go your own way on all the bits and pieces that surround the source code.

So, we've been at this game for a while and have an existing build system ready to go; does all the obvious, keeping generated files well away from sources, pulling in sub-dependencis, generating sufficient OSS compliance docs etc. Multiple languages and targets, the usual. Loads of relevant support libraries neatly curated, all version controlled, waiting to give their all to our next project.

Rust does sound interesting, let's start reading about how to get it added into our setup so we can asess how well it'll work for real; there are books on Rust and rustc online, looks good.

Section 1.1 Installation: "If you prefer not to use rustup for some reason, please see the Other Rust Installation Methods page for more options." White hair equals suspicious mind, what could "some reason" mean? Follow the link: "Offline installation. rustup downloads components from the internet on demand. If you need to install Rust without access to the internet, rustup is not suitable." OR, access to the Internet aside, you're in a Serious Business and want some modicum of control over what is being used.

Section 1.3: "Cargo is Rust’s build system and package manager". Um, they've created yet another build sytem of their own, catering specifically to Rust?

Section 7: We are now using new terminology for compilation units? Including calling any old sub-module without a main() a library? "Most of the time when Rustaceans say “crate”, they mean library crate, and they use “crate” interchangeably with the general programming concept of a “library"."

Gritting teeth, carry on reading 'cos that is the job. Get to the FAQ:

Q: "Will Cargo work with C code (or other languages)?" A: "Yes!" "Our solution: Cargo allows a package to specify a script (written in Rust) to run before invoking rustc". Go that route and before you start into your Rust journey you need to know enough Rust to duplicate at least enough of the existing build system to cope with "Building a bundled C library" and "Finding a C library on the host system" - taking into account their methods of avoiding unnecessary rebuilds...

Maybe the next FAQ will ease our woes:

Q: "Can Cargo be used inside of make (or ninja, or ...)" A: "Indeed." ... "We still have some work to do on those fronts, but using Cargo in the context of conventional scripts is something we designed for from the beginning and will continue to prioritize." That is it. No link to any helpful hints.

Look, this is just a load of rants from a crusty, but if Rust wanted to be taken seriously as a language that we should migrate to, it should really help with migration. It is easier - a LOT easier - to drop a COBOL compiler into our build.

And I've not even touched on crates.io

Soaring costs, inflation nurturing generation of 'quiet quitters' among under-30s

Creative euphemism

They can't call it "work to rule" because that might give workers the idea that they have any kind of power to influence management and make them reconsider the pay and conditions.

Call it "quiet quitting" instead and make it sound like the workers are just too lazy to even help themselves, there is just nothing that management could do.

Serious surfer? How to browse like a pro on Firefox

Re: Plenty of horizontal space?

Too true. I have a 1920x1200 monitor - i.e. portrait - that is great for reading PDFs and (most) long docs on websites. You'd think that 1200 wide would easily be good enough for any website, especially ones that are long, long, pages and pages of scrollable content.

Nope.

Sigh.

Re: Directories please

Ah, they are called "directories" because they literally *are* directories! Things that reference and provide metadata for other things. Nothing to do with picking an arbitrary name which then sort of stuck.

And you may want to expand your knowledge about how paper directories exist and are (have been) used. One level deep? Can only be arranged in one way, alphabetically? There are a multitude of librarians, archivists and stock controllers, to name a few, who could help you there.

Re: Directories please

But, but using the "folders" model makes it so much easier for the Users to understand! Ideas like nesting folders become so intuitive. "Directory" is too cumbersome an idea.

I mean, how could you explain complicated things like multiple links to a file without using folders?

You'd have to come up with some outlandish examples, like having one directory (in a big fat book) that gave you some kind of reference that lets you find, say, a person or a business - probably just use a number for that. Then have *another* directory that, say, only listed a subset of those, maybe just businesses, printed on, ooooh, yellow paper to tell the two books apart. Totally unworkable model for how files work on a computer, people would only push the metaphor too far, like jokingly suggesting you could a third directory that used the same numbers, but now gave them different names like "Mum", "Big Sis", " Old bloke down pub". The whole thing would be stretched too far.

No, no, no-one would be able to understand what a "directory" means. Book on yellow pages, don't make laugh.

Now, using the proper "folders" metaphor, you can explain symbolic links with the simple physical model of - um, well, if I cut here, glue this, now you hold that end and pull

Re: And this is so relevant to browser development.

> I prefer my IT and my IT news coverage to be about IT.

Agreed.

Well, except for Bootnotes, of course. Although those are losing their splendour as well; remember when they were so off-to-side that commentards used to have to be reminded they were reading a Bootnote after they'd flung an "IT Angle?" ?

SQL Server admins warned about Fargo ransomware

"it used the file extension .mallox"

So now I find myself cheering on it the Bad Guys, who can be bothered to learn that it has been a long time since file name extensions were restricted to three or less characters.

Looking at the current darling of the programming world who decided to use .rs instead of .rust, just as the latest example.

And the Bad Guys even know you can append extra extensions, like myfile.txt.fargo3, which could open so many avenues if more people knew about it (see more in the file rants.markdown.txt)

Florida asks Supreme Court if it's OK to ban content moderation it doesn't like

Re: You can either have Free Speech

> a really lazy patch

And as this audience is well-placed to know, once a lazy patch gets released to the public it will stay around for far too long.

Alert: 15-year-old Python tarfile flaw lurks in 'over 350,000' code projects

Put in a lot of ../../.. and you'll eventually ascend to root.

So, having a ridiculously deep directory tree is actually a security feature! Well, until the bad guys put in a ludicrously large number of ../

Microsoft debuts Windows 11 2022 Update – now with features added monthly

Re: Bug free?

No more bells and whistles please, RESTORE the basics!

'Last man standing in the floppy disk business' reckons his company has 4 years left

Re: Bummer

You never learnt to nip out the holes with your canines?

Re: Speaking Of Ancient Storage Methods .....

Data retention for 100 years is all well and good, but is there a requirement that the information still be readable and interpretable in 100 years time? Readable by the glowing, yet ironically blind, subterranean mutants living below the magic warm dome, that is.

Excel's comedy of errors needs a new script, not new scripting

Re: Excel is like any other tool

Whosoever can wield this spreadsheet shall be granted forever ownership and a right bollocking when it goes wrong, no matter it is only your second week on the job.

SETI seeks amateur astronomers to find hot Jupiter-like exoplanets

Stirring it up a bit

This would be the same Unistellar whose Kickstarter product was reviewed by that nice Mr Thunderf00t

https://youtube.com/watch?v=tyG9kbJo2sg

Crypto biz Wintermute loses $160m in cyber-heist, tells us not to stress out

Re: Yay !!!

Why would you ever have unplugged your copy of "Neuromancer" from its socket in your neck?

Now, "Mozart in Mirrorshades" I'd understand unplugging (and stamping on, with extreme prejudice).

Linux luminaries discuss efforts to bring Rust to the kernel

Re: Why make things slightly more complex ?

Thanks for the link to Redox.

The best thing about El Reg comments is when someone posts a link to something I've not yet come across.

Re: Why make things slightly more complex ?

And at the risk of seeming petty, with regards to your convincing paragraph that Rust could never be 10x faster than C (as it was a rather excessive reaction to what was not only an obvious parenthetical hyperbole but also indicated that I don't expect such a speed up to occur):

Unless one language is vastly different in its manner of execution (e.g. purely interpretive BASIC versus Pascal compiled to machine code), which is clearly not the case when comparing C and Rust, as you know the only time you'd ever see an order of magnitude improvement would be with a change in algorithm and/or data structure in use. One thing that switching to a different language, especially one with any "oddball" behaviour compared to the previous choice, can do is to prompt a re-examination of the algorithms and data structures.

Of course, any such changes are likely to be portable back into the C variant and built for all the architectures, in which case clearly the whole experiment was a failure as there wouldn't be any Rust running in the kernel. Hmm.

Please note, BTW, that I've not said one way or the other whether I personally want there to be any Rust in the Linux kernel, but if they want to try then have it. I'll trust Linus to reject the results if they aren't useful after all (and that includes because the compiler support isn't up to scratch), otherwise, yay, we all win.

Re: Why make things slightly more complex ?

Ok, we can move onto this second topic

> just that it currently does not have the support in place today

The key word here being "currently".

Remember, at the moment this is all in the "let us find out if is it going to be worth doing?" stage; none of the existing C code is actually being replaced yet, in any production kernels.

When (if!) the Rust work demonstrates it actually has worth to the kernel there will be more delay as the new code is thrashed and made stable and production-ready even for the architectures already supported by Rust.

In the time to get to that stage, the Rust compilers have the chance to improve architectur support: as well as the GCC version, there is now some *reason* for other backends to be built, as they would now be used in a non-trivial project.

Re: Why make things slightly more complex ?

Going back and reading the article, when the text you quoted is put back into its context, there is nothing in it that implies there will be lots of time wasted on re-implementing from C to Rust.

Especially if you bother to go and look at the referenced LWN article, which talks about the two currently extant drivers, starting with "The idea of being able to write kernel code in the Rust language has a certain appeal, but it is hard to judge how well that would actually work in the absence of examples to look at."

So there is now *one* commonly used driver being rewritten in Rust plus one new driver for a network protocol. Now anyone else who is interested in coding Rust drivers can use the NVMe driver as an example, comparing the two versions to see what the different approaches entail. And everyone else can have a go at running the new driver to see for themselves how the whole idea is panning out: for which NVMe is a pretty good choice, as it is commonly available and commonly used hardware, so it will be pretty clear if it is working or not.

If you are of the opinion that providing examples and experimenting to see if Rust can do what some hope is a waste of time then...

Of course, if the experiment shows that rewriting the NVMe driver results in clearly obvious advantages over the C version (probably won't run 10x faster, but if it did...) then, yes, there would probably follow a frenzy of recoding.

Creatives up in arms over claim that AI is killing human art

Autonomous taxi service to "light up many more markets"

The local Farmer's Market that takes over the high street on Thursdays?

Do these people ever listen to the words they are using and think about the images they conjure up?

Don't want to get run over by a Ford car? There's a Bluetooth app for that

Ambulance chasing as a service

Rough idea: car knows you have subscribed to the app and gets your ID from the beacon, verified by comparing GPS and accelerometer data. Send data to Cloud, which dials an "approved" (read: kickback friendly) local lawyer/ambulance/undertaker as appropriate. Use "Injury Lawyers 4 U" style advertising to incentivise (sorry) users to run the app.

Have to sort out the details, so that Ford doesn't get sued for the accident, but they can figure that one out.

Risks:

- becomes too profitable for Ford, so shareholders best served by deliberately aiming cars at the app. Lawyers become rich.

- becomes too profitable to jump in front of a Ford. Lawyers become rich.

- other vehicle manufacturers join in scheme; traffic data is analysed in real-time to provide a spot market for maximised jaywalking profit. Lawyers become rich.

Think of it as Economics In Action.

Brought to you by the Assasin's Guild

"'Ere, you can't run me over, I've got the App on my phone"

"Sorry Guv, you didn't take out the full monthly subscription, so I'm not allowed to miss you. 'Ere, I'm generous, how about just a bounce off the wing mirror and you'll promise to upgrade this evening - or I'll be seeing you soon."

US bans some foreign investments in chips, AI, quantum computing

make sure they don't threaten national security

> advanced clean energy

America's security could be threatened by people outside the US getting clean energy? The clean energy that is intended to help against Global Warming?

The US do realise that they are actually part of The Globe and that everyone on the planet will benefit from everyone else getting clean energy?

Ah, I've just realised why that was a stupid question to ask. As you were.

UK govt refuses to give up on scoring Arm dual-listing for London

Re: Move along....nothing to see here...

As ARM is IP only, and Intel have said they'll fab ARM-based designs now (TSMC always would), money they spend on fabs will end up as more capacity to build designs licensed from ARM. Whether that leads to licence money coming into (or at least through) the UK - well, that is what all the discussion about retaining Cambridge HQ is about.

Merge shifts Ethereum to full proof-of-stake, price slumps

Re: Sink

Are there any stats on how many of those 400,000 bought their ETH at anything close to the current price?

If they bought in around 2015 at a dollar a pop at just hung onto them, not buying increasingly expensive mining rigs, then their cost to put up a stake has been $32 (and a lot of getting on with the rest of life) and now they have a chance at playing as a Validator.

Obviously, plenty of people will have paid more than $32 to buy their stake, but once you get a flow of people being seen to put up a stake, more and more will follow.

$48,000 buy-in

So does anyone have any figures on how many of those $48,000 buy-ins are needed to have a good chance of subverting the Ethereum chain by providing a consensus agreeing to a fraudulent block? And has this gone up/down/stayed the same since the switch over?

I can't help feeling that, if the buy-in is now literally a buy-in, as opposed to amassing all the mining kit plus everything needed to run it, the barrier for trying to take over the consensus has been lowered. At least perceptually (easier for Joe Family Man to get his head around). Then again, if that means that more attempts at gaming the system are made, it just pumps the price up again. So even (especially) just the perception of a lower bar would just make the existing ETH holders wealthier (on paper) - plans within plans.

Heart now pledges 30-seat hybrid electric commercial flights by 2028

More than one way to fly electric

IIRC a long time ago one of the pulp magazines (probably Analog) had a go at taking seriously some of the old ideas about electric flight.

Such as whacking a massive charge on the aircraft and, by suitable extraction and retraction of needle points, or similar fine discharge sites, using the "electric wind" effect for lift and propulsion.

Some drawbacks to that scheme were noted but it did make the next seem more practical: a magnetohydrodynamic drive (crudely put, ionise the air and accelerate it with induced currents). Again, sadly, there are power issues, but an MHD aircraft would be quite fun: eerie pulsating glows from the engines, VTOL and hover plus rapid shift from vertical to horizontal thrust. This all reminds me of something, though not sure it could be identified if it happened to fly past.

Re: metoo

"Galvani" is still up for grabs.

... how that power will be supplied ...

30 passengers at 400 W apiece...

Business Class get recumbent frames, First Class tourers and the other 20 old-style sit-up-and-beg.

Carry on must all fit into the whicker basket.

Re: Skin effects

And this whole daft subthread came about because the OP mistakenly wrote kilowatts instead of the kilowatt-hours.

Though I've no idea why the subthread is labelled "skin effects". Are we arguing over what AWG you need to use to carry that 1600 kW? Have we decided on the voltage and frequency yet?

California Governor signs child privacy law requiring online age checks

Re: What Privacy?

Yes, of course, why bother fighting anything, far too tiring.

But there is no need to get the government involved, they'll only farm the ID system out to a commercial contractor. You can save on tax spending by just going straight to the real source of global IDs: simply change your forum name to your Facebook ID.

Re: Govment as the nanny

> This sort of thing isn't the responsibility of any government

So just to be clear to those of us who are confused by all this, just which part of the following is the bit you object to?

"The Age-Appropriate Design Code (AADC) Act forbids online service providers that offer service to children from using the personal information of children in a way that's detrimental, from gathering, selling, or storing a child's geo-location, from profiling by default, and from soliciting children to provide their information. It also requires privacy policies and related terms be accessible and enforced."

Re: Who am us, anyway?

Careful there, you're being downvoted for quoting the sensible bit 'cos it ain't manly to want any kind of protection being given to you by the gubmint.

Re: Other options

> The solution has been presented. Do not slurp data from anybody without consent and then they have to prove they can legally give consent. aka Opt-in

Absolutely. That does seem to be the simple resolution to it all.

Re: Confused Brit

> That said, I'm curious how OP's question is relevant to a story about a California law.

It is relevant because of all the comments that this law goes against the Constitution, and similar discussions about other US State laws.

If you have two things that are in conflict, to completely understand how that conflict can be settled you need to know how *either* side could be changed, if at all. With an indication of how easy it is: the US Constitution could be changed, it just doesn't happen often. So it appears to be that a good way to attack any old State law is to convince enough (or just the right set of) people that "it is unconstitutional" 'cos this one probably won't be the one to trigger a new Amendment.

To give a full answer to a Confused Brit, it would probably be good to expand your response from the trivial (amendments happen) to the more applicable "interpretations shift": that is, the practical effects of changing your minds about what the Constitution actually means instead of just changing the actual wording to make it clear what it means in today's terms!

Of course, all of the above is just from the pov of yet another Confused Brit who - obviously - isn't steeped day to day in the US Constitution and all the ways it is used in US politics, as I'm just trying to answer your question "how OP's question is relevant to a story about a California law?". So any misconceptions you find here just indicate where it would be useful for you to expand upon your answer to help our understanding.

Re: Simple way to dispense with the need for an age checki

> There is a constitutional Right to Free Speech in USA

Not relevant to the vast majority of websites - e.g. blindingly obvious case, you don't have any right to say whatever you want on Facebook.

Arm execs: We respect RISC-V but it's not a rival in the datacenter

Re: What goes around comes around

The x86 CISC programming model was kept alive - and made increasingly complex - by the PC compatibles of the 80's onwards. Whilst the other CISC devices slowly gave up their positions, often to ARM (e.g. Palm devices started on 68000 derivatives and ended on ARM), PCs wanted to keep the backwards compatibility for End User software.

But all the x86 PCs were also all moving towards RISC implementation, as they shifted to more complex microcoded devices.

So you've been using RISC devices for a long time - just because you don't get to directly code to the RISC instructions doesn't mean they aren't there, doing all the hard work.

America taps 150+ prosecutors to fight cryptocurrency crime

"Digital-asset crimes ... require a certain level of competency"

As opposed to other types of crime where the DoJ are perfectly happy to use any old incompetents they find hanging around the office?

SWIFT to trial blockchain – but not for its core payment service

Re: "the information needs to be quickly shared with investors"

And when have you ever seen properly signed* emails from any financial institution?

*assuming here that you meant verifiably via cryptographic means

Amazon 'punishes' sellers who dare offer lower prices on other marketplaces

Re: oh the irony, aka Friday rant

Lost my concentration for a moment whilst working through the Amazon site and also ended up with a month's Prime.

Trying to "get my money's worth" ended up in a binge watching marathon so extreme I'm surprised there weren't welts from the computer desk chair!

Insidious, as after a while the brain melts to the point that you don't notice you're addicted to some utter junk - ooh, there is a new series (sorry, "season") starting in 40 days into your 30 day Prime.

Re: Prefer to pay more, sometimes pay less

Unfortunately, Amazon own Book Depository: there is no escape there.

Re: Amazon doing something useful?

Some wood carvers use them in their worksheds for roughing out (and some really good carvers don't use anything other than the chain saw).

Similarly, ice sculptors: water and electrics feels like a bad idea, but I'm happy not to have petrol-driven in the town square during festivals.

Can reflections in eyeglasses actually leak info from Zoom calls? Here's a study into it

Old telly could end up looking almost exactly *unlike* the modern stuff: the static backgrounds would remain blurry whilst the actors would be super-enhanced to sharp clarity.

Who knows, maybe we could get so used to actually seeing the actors clearly on Legend, Dave and all the other repeats channels that the compression on the new stuff gets improved.

Re: IgNobel 2023

But if you take off your glasses you'll not be able to clearly see your colleagues in all their glamour.

Like Fred, who still feels like he is alone in his home office and continues his deep nasal exploration. Or Jill, who sits with her back to the window so she can't see the neighbours doing - what is that? - but gives you the perfect view.

Maybe, if wearing specs on video calls becomes a well-known security risk, we can turn around the old habits of hiring people just because they are good-looking.

"Plug-ugly: because Security by Obscurity works on video"

Stand back, the FTC is here to police gig work

Americans want to participate in gig work for the flexibility, not for wages and benefits alone

The ONLY reasons to get involved in ANY work is for the wages and benefits!

Well, okay, there are some things (programming, other artistic endeavours) that are so much fun people will do them anyway (once the basic wages and benefits are taken care of). But somehow I don't think there are many people who will do the sort of thing these "gig" jobs entail just for the intellectual pleasure it provides.

Researchers build ML models to forecast food shortages

It would be good if someone can show I'm reading the paper incorrectly...

Reading the article from Nature, it seems - as then quoted here - to be confusing the word "explain" with "correlate".

Unless they really believe that the secondary data sources, such as geo-located tweets, really are the explanation for hunger? Then again, they only mention tweets that once, so they probably don't believe that (but why mention tweets at all?).

I'd be very glad if an ML model really could help, but unless I'm reading the paper wrong (see title) and the graphs included, their model is really not doing a good job. Their predictions are generally following straight lines or just shallow changes whilst the near-real-time data they are meant to be predictions of bounce up and down over an 8 week period.

Their own error analysis shows wide variance in the accuracy of their models' results.

"Results indicate that, as one might expect, errors happen when the independent variables take on values that differ the most from those most frequently seen by the models during training."

So, like all of today's ML models, these are just crudely matching on the inputs from the training, without any consideration as to whether they've even allowed the model to see the full range of values that each input *could* take - and instead of flagging "out of expected range" as you would in a properly-built model, it just spits out values that aren't seen as errors until compared against the new ground truth.

There is also a swing from the start of the "Main" section discussing using secondary data sources (including the above-mentioned tweets) to feed the predictive models to discussion and graphing of models fed more substantive data, such as population density and GDP per capita, as base-line model: "however, because they are annual national-level figures, they serve as a fundamental baseline but cannot help in predicting the sub-national and rapidly changing dynamics characterizing food insecurity, which is the objective of this study".

But it is these base-line models whose outputs are explained (via the SHAP method) in terms of which of the inputs caused the change.

What I'm totally missing is the connection between the apparently reasonable (as in, what their inputs are) base-line models and the other "secondary inputs" model that is purported to track the "changing dynamics" that are "the objective of this study".

Unless that early part of the "Main" section is just irrelevant to their work?

Or if you can point out what I've misunderstood...

Don't say Pentium or Celeron anymore, it's just Processor now, says Intel

Re: Given their namings….

Perhaps instead of using "Pro" as a suffix, they could use it as a prefix.

Then we'd have "Processor" and "Pro-Processor"; the latter will inevitably be called the "Pro-squared-cessor" or "Pro2-cessor".

Which immediately gives the name for the next iteration, obviously the "Pro3-cessor", " Pro4-cessor" and so on. Or just the pithy "Pro3", " Pro4".

Also useful for commentards, as there are many ways we can turn a "Pro" prefix - for example, when it turns out that the things have a tendency to ping out of the socket they can be called the "Prolapsed-cessor".