Posts by that one in the corner

Eggheads crack the code for the perfect soft boil

Re: "a total duration of 32 minutes"

It was a bit of a change, tempering Bob Monkhouse on Golden Shot and then watching The Mr Hell Show.

Golden Baby....

I was told to make backups, not test them. Why does that make you look so worried?

A rod for my own backup

At New Year, I had a think about the pain of restoring our systems at home: a random collection of servers that do whatever we find useful/interesting around the house (from NextCloud to 'Pi BirdNet).

The data and archives are on a NAS, which syncs to a duplicate box for a basic backup. So reasonably happy with that. But restoring an individual one of the machines is a PITA.

Ah Ha! Move them all into VMs, with a common hypervisor (dead easy to install, not "restore", as needed) and then just use the admin tools for the VMs. Oh, and see if the R'Pi's SD card can be replaced by network boot. Don't want to worry about high-availability and live VMs moved from host to host (just a simple home setup - and the random weird peripherals don't auto-unplug themselves, so not worth the bother).

Second week of Feb: oh, if only I was running a Data Centre, or at least a "Home Lab" that I pretended was a DC! All the hypervisors (Proxmox, xcp-ng are the bestest candidates so far, 'nuff said) are geared up to single-click manage all the Big Boy Heavy Lifting, but I don't *want* to merge everything into one pool! The boxes are all "whatever I got my hands on that year", no two the same...

I *have* made progress: I have now added two new-to-me PCs to the pile, so that I can trash those learning how (please be "how") this can work!

But when it *is* working, I *will* be able to easily make backups of the VMs, can easily check they'll restore and run.

Won't I? Please.

Re: Here are the copies

But the operator had to wait until purchasing could get him enough Tipex to completely white out the disc before installing the update.

Oracle starts laying mines in JavaScript trademark battle

Re: A rose by any other name. . .

> Isn't that the point? If the only thing binding J*v*Scr*pt to *r*cl* are the first four characters, then make the change.

I'm with you there (see a.n.other comment above or below this, depending on your sort order).

But even if we convert all of El Reg to a more sensible name, we are but a few souls, brave and true, wading out onto the sands, swords held high or clattered against our yellow-hued shields, as we chase back the waters that recede before us. But they return with the moonlight, covering the beach with detritus dropped by the hordes of The Great Unwashed, who have heard The Full Name of The Beast and chant it endlessly (even if only to curse it for miring their surfing in the mud).

Ah, forgive the despairing words of a tired old warrior - I was sore wounded in the C-Hash skirmishes. Come, we shall raise again the Red Banner Of Five and drape it over our pages to hide what in truth lies there.

Re: A rose by any other name. . .

I think that this AC may have escaped the advertising blitz that a certain company (famous for their pizza boxes) could push out at the time and has mistaken shell-shock for being a fanboy.

As I was trying to indicate, it could get a little - intense - as they tried to make sure you remembered their name (Helios, was it?).

Once you get on a mailing list...

Re: Rename ja ascript

> ECMAScript—who came up with that name?

Everybody in the standardisation group that wrote the relevant draft for ECMA, when Daddy Netscape and Mummy Microsoft wouldn't stop squabbling. It was the worst choice and therefore equally repugnant to everyone, with no favouritism.

> It wouldn't take long for us as developers to get used to calling it something new

Well, everybody has been making the same complaints about the name for some three decades and haven't managed ant better yet.

But, please do give your best shot and we'll see if we can make it stick (maybe just on El Reg for a start - so something appealling to commentards - but then we can annex Stack overflow and after that, THE WORLD![1]

[1] sorry, sorry, just caught a touch of the old Oracles there

Re: A rose by any other name. . .

PS I may have been spending too much time at that point talking to Sun and their sales people; by the way, have you heard of Sun? They have this great thing called Display Postscript and a little language called Java {eyes glaze over, exits mumbling "runs everywhere, tee hee, runs everywhere"}

Re: A rose by any other name. . .

> I've honestly never completely understood why it should be named J*v*scr*pt in the first place. The similarities are, at best, superficial.

The name was never meant to indicate that the two were similar as languages[1] but that they were intended to be "the pair of languages from which you choose to best fit your needs today", all thanks to the good graces of Sun. So if you wanted to write structured compiled code, choose Java (from Sun), if you wanted to whip up a quick bit of scriptish code, chose JavaScript (from Sun). Both[2] available in your friendly Web browser to enhance your Web pages. PS have we mentioned they are from Sun? Even though the scripting language was actually a one-man effort from someone inside Netscape (but please think of Sun) and took a while to be available anywhere other than inside Netscape (which could also run your Java Applets, thanks to Sun).

Nothing more than a piece of marketing.

Hence the copyrighting of both languages and all the foolishness that followed, with anyone silly enough not to want the Real Thing from Sun needing to call theirs something different (and don't you dare copy our API either, looking at you, Microsoft).

JavaScript was held more tightly than Java (ref the freeing up of the Java API, after lawsuits, and the introduction of other languages that target the JVM and interoperate with Java). So then Oracle got it as part of Sun and found they could still be bullish about the trademark on JavaScript...

Why not change the name? 'Cos then Oracle would lose a plaything.

Why don't the rest of us change it's name? Because nobody knows what ECMAScript is, but everyone has heard of JavaScript, can probably guess what JScript is supposed to be like - and all the source files have .js at the end.

Please feel free to campaign for ECMAScript.

[1] despite the way that JavaScript - rather, it's predecessor - had "curly braces, you know, like Java" slapped on top of it, to make it seem more familiar to Joe Programmer than it's cod-Lispish origins. As you rightly say, this gave it at best a superficial likeness to Java.

[2] quietly ignoring the original pitch for Java as "Write once, run everywhere"; at least until Java Applets waned and Java as a general-purpose language was rediscovered by those who really matter, i.e. the marketers. To the mild bemusement of the programmers who'd been actually involved in using it all the while.

Re: Unpopular opinion here

> There's nothing there I didn't know already

And yet your first comment managed to got it wrong.

> Sod 30 years of history - seems you can't read a simple post

Damn, keep forgetting that these people *really* need to have it spelled out for them - without a /s marker on my previous comment, he was totally lost.

Re: Unpopular opinion here

> Go learn some history

Oh, be fair. That is almost 30 years of history to cover since the Mocha language was created. And when you look on Stackoverflow there is a load of guff, hiding the (boring and simple) answer.

You can't expect him to be able to wade through all that!

JavaScript.tm

So, Turkmenistan is joining the fight against Oracle as well. Good for them.

No database can stand up against a truly great furry hat.

Blue Origin spins up lunar gravity for New Shepard flight

Re: flight time

> sustaining the gees comes for free once you have spun up

Just so long as nothing runs around the spin equator for too long or too fast.

If you want to test a Lunar Rover's traction (not necessarily adult-human-sized Rover, might get crowded) then you need to make sure it reverses direction regularly (or you run two, one spinwards, one anti-spin).

Although, at 11 RPM, your Rover's are going to have to go slow to avoid affecting their effective weight too much.

Openreach tests 50 Gbps broadband – don’t expect it anytime soon

Apparently, I could get a "good deal" if I sign TODAY for a fibre download speed that exceeds the speed of my LAN.

At some point in the distant future

From Open reach?

Remind me, when is the Sun scheduled to be a Red Giant?

Why UK Online Safety Act may not be safe for bloggers

VPN to connect the family "intranet"[1]

Cursory reading followed by a run through the online checklist, really hoping I missed a paragraph...

But what constitutes an "online" service or website? Is it explicitly defined somewhere as something on an IP address that is exposed to the Internet and can be accessed (at least to a login page) by anyone with a just web browser?

What if the service is only accessible via a VPN - and that has been set up already such that the various households see no functional difference between it and, say, The Register? That is, they just put in the URL and off they go, as it ought to work. Second cousin Timmy (who I don't actually know other from his posts) is letting his school chum Doug post from Timmy's room as Doug has the photos of their garage band[2]

Note that there are exclusions if the site is only providing access to your businesses Intranet-type stuff (CRM etc) but there is nothing about if you are not a business! And that still leaves a Doug as a problem.

[1] sorry for using that word

[2] trying to come up with a reasonable scenario that includes a wider group of people

Specifically says that user-generated content is not provider content

> "posting comments or reviews relating to provider content" (eg, comments about bikes posted to a bike blog)

So if a comment section veers off-topic from its TFA, in particular starts discussing other comments, it stops being related to provider content and then *does* become the responsibility of the website?

This gets a bit silly and meta, but especially if comments are plucked from the web page and presented out of context...

Tesla sales crash in Europe, UK. We can only wonder why

The greatest set of YouTube comments - in the wuuurld.

Google: How to make any AMD Zen CPU always generate 4 as a random number

Re: Sid6581 LFSR

> My trusty old Sid “noise generator” works via “linear feedback shift register,”

A LFSR generates randomoid numbers - they look (and sound) random (to our senses) but they really aren't.

Re: This is possibly what you were alluding to, but to elaborate...

> User microcodeable processors would be interesting to experiment with ...

Have a look at the Xerox Alto emulator (another article). You, the end-user, were expected to be loading up programs and/or OSes that each had their own microcode and you can debug microcode in the emulator.

Re: if trust is a true issue

Well said.

We tried to come up with pragmatic responses to that article; the best we had (which you can still argue over 'til the cows come home) was you would try to ensure that you weren't trapped within that closed set of pre-built tools that were looking for their own source code to poison. Which only works if you have a multiplicity of compilers/assemblers/linkers - i.e. the entire toolchain - and use these to build each other. Which may mean going back to the original way the first compilers come about, hand-building the first one and bootstrapping up. Or being convinced that it is not feasible for all of your toolchains to be able to recognise and poison every other toolchain from its sources.

This takes up a lot of time and energy. Especially if you are going to start worrying about, say, poisoned AMD microcode; it was easier back in the 1980s: if you had modifiable microcode it wasn't all cryptographically signed and you had a chance to play the same game.

Which, of course, then drops you straight into the hoary old question of how much work you feel is necessary to adequately protect yourself.

Which is bottom-line the question that every paper about security and trust poses.

On the bright side

Can we hope for a resurgence in people having a go at writing some microcode to do something useful/interesting/fun?

You know, hack it.

How about something that will run Conway's Life *really* fast?

Or - can you run Doom on it?

Trump admin seeks to reclassify federal CIOs, opening door to political appointees

Re: Chief Information Commissar

> control and improve morale in the military forces

And it worked.

Nobody reported any issues with low morale.

At least, never twice.

Trump scrubs all mention of DEI, gender, climate change from federal websites

Re: Gleichschaltung

> Any actual evidence of this "Matrix through media control"?

He saw an episode twice on TV: "Whooah deja vu!". They've changed something in the Matrix!

Early mornings, late evenings, weekends. Useless users always demand support

Re: Rarely

> techie will have readily understood reasons for not having a computer to hand. (Gee, Mike, I'd like to help you, but I'm at the British Museum right now.)

So that explains the sign in front of the abacus displays: "in emergency, break glass".

Google torpedoes 'no AI for weapons' rules

Seems like a reasonable corporate policy

They can't actually make "safeguards" that really work to stop anyone else using their tech for military purposes so it is their responsibility to follow suit, for the sake of the shareholders.

Admitting it publicly just makes it easier to list on the yearly reports without having to hide it away anywhere or cover it in weasel words.

Now, just so long as the Bad Guys co-operate, stick the retro-reflective markers on their vehicles and wipe off their facial recognition confusing makeup, all will be well.

Poisoned Go programming language package lay undetected for 3 years

Re: Go doesn't track the metric

Ok, I'll bite (and let you point out my gross ignorance of serving up files):

It may appear as though counting the number of downloads might[1] be of interest in judging the impact of this problem[2], but aside from that possibility, you seem to be very certain that they should be tracking all the individual downloads even when/if everything is all hunky-dory.

Can you please explain why? What would they - Google or all the devs using Go - get from doing that?

They aren't (AFAIK) using this mirror to, say, build a list of most popular downloads this week, they very explicitly aren't looking to only mirror the 1000 favourite packages (and saving space by deleting the rest). It isn't something humans are supposed to be excited about reading and starring their favourites.

For what purpose - and at what level of detail - would they need to be tracking to avoid being "clowns" when it comes to running an immutable cache server?

[1] it is a cache - does 100 downloads indicate 100 separate projects hitting it, 100 people/build machines all on the same project or 1 person who isn't bothering to keep a local copy? What is the cost of trying to track and separate those cases - and what would be the use of that data to warrant the cost of gathering and keeping it?

[2] back to cost and likelihood of that spend actually helping (other than making for an exciting headline).

Musk’s DOGE ship gets ‘full’ access to Treasury payment system, sinks USAID

Hmm, if one was 18 in 1960, you'd be 82 now. Plenty of 82 year olds around with active minds and willing to tell you about how things used to be.

If in 1960 an astute[1] 18 year old was to spend time talking to 82 year olds, they'd be getting the scoop from a (young) adult's life in, ooh, let's see, 1896.

So an astute 18 year old now could be learning of how things felt[1] in 1896 in a conversation just one step removed from "I know, because I was there". 128 years and without attempting to pull in any outrageous numbers. When you are a Rising Young Man and go to talk to the really old buffers sitting by the fire down the club.

"Before I wasn an astute 18 year old, as I was growing up back in 1890, all anyone ever talked about at the dinner table was the start of the Johnson County War and Uncle Buck losing his land to the damn homesteaders" [3]

And considering that things like Civil Wars tend to leave scars that are easily visible for a long time after, physically and in societal changes, looking around and realising (if you happen to be astute) "ah, yes, that is the unpleasant result of what we were holding discourse upon last evening".

[1] The sort of chap who was thinking of Making a Name for Himself

[2] Yes, felt. "What was it like back then, how did you feel compared to..."; the dates and times you can get from the books

[3] I know this all seems unbelievable, but back before there were screens, people used to spend a lot of time in the evenings just talking to each other, even across generations. Or so I'm told by my grandparents.

Re: DOGE

> It is an undeniable fact that most governments have become over bloated and can be made more efficient.

True.

But only because every single organisation has bloat in it. Every one. Even if you are a Sole Trader you can cut down on the Digestive Biscuits.

There is also a (ludicrously complicated) balance to be struck between "cutting out the bloat" and the cost of (trying) to do that: no point adding up the pennies going to McVities rather than Lidl if you get a better contract because you were happier on the phone call when the dunk didn't drop to the bottom of the mug. Try putting that into your Excel spreadsheet.

The biggest issue with government bloat is simply that of scale and people failing to get their heads around it: red-top headline "MoD wastes 12 miilion per year on Rich Tea".

Yes, they fail at things (government IT!). And when they do fail, they fail big. Because they are big. And the people inside are just as bloody awful at understanding scale as those outside: it just becomes silly numbers.

We can always point to specific line items that are failing - and damn well should - but just running around shouting about unspecified generic bloat is vacuous.

> Add a criminal record and financial history check as well.

Ain't the major problem here that we all know the financial history and criminal record - and that seemed to spur on voters?

> Look at all you lot on here thinking USAID is some kindly aid agency helping poor far off countries - do some research! It's not a well kept cover story.

USAID exists solely to advance American Interests across the world - is that the "secret" you think was being "covered up"?

The difference is, USAID does that by, yes, helping poor people in far off countries. And makes damn sure that everybody knows about it. Because that aids US Interests, including but most definitely not limited to[1]:

* Helping to control spreadable disease outside the US reduces the amount of said disease coming into the US.

* Helping to (re)build in foreign lands reduces the number of displaced trying to get into the US.

* For all the lily-livered pinkoes in the developed world, the US is seen to be doing something ucomplicatedly positive we can approve of.

This is all under the banner of "Soft Power". Which I guess just isn't as exciting to watch on TV compared to sending in the gunboats.

[1] this is lots of words already and, yes, we also all know that the rancid side of US influence "can get people in under the radar disguised as aid workers" - no matter how bloody stupid that idea is.

Call of Duty studio co-founder pleads guilty to crashing drone into firefighting aircraft

Not after the goose greased a few palms.

Privacy Commissioner warns the ‘John Smiths’ of the world can acquire ‘digital doppelgangers’

Re: UK financial records and credit agencies

Ah, credit agencies.

Anyone who just decides one day to gather all your data without your explicit permission at the start and then just use that to feed us adverts and spam: we all bitch and demand they be controlled.

Someone else decides one day to gather your data etc and uses it to mess with your life and livelihood not only gets away with it but, after admitting what they've done in TV ads, convinces people that this normal, obvious and would you like to install an app and give us even more data we can monetise?

If either one makes a mistake? Tough. You are now getting spam meant for someone in Italy - oh, and we've upped your lease payment.

Re: Tough Problem

If I "send the boys round to have a little chat with you" they aren't going to be in school uniform[1]

[1] well, there was that one time...

I say twin, you say doppelganger

The more syllables you use to say the same thing, clearly the cleverer you are and the more serious you are about the issues.

Unless they are trying to say that the way forward, to avoid *accidentally* mixing their data, is to just smoosh them all up: make all the "John Smiths" perfectly the same, proper doppelgangers.

PS

Don't these government agencies bother with, you know, simple ways to tell two people with the same name & d.o.b. apart? Even though I'm pretty sure I'm the only Corner in the Village (ovoid architecture, very popular around here) I still get asked "what is the first line of the address?". If that failed, at least I'd be aware of the potential problem (hosting a clan reunion that had gone on just a bit too long) and could nudge the government agent.

CompSci teacher sets lab task: Accidentally breaking the university

Re: In late 1977 ...

> At least the network managed to handle the damage and route around it.

> Not fun having bigwigs from Moffett and NASA Ames screaming

"Respectfully, Sir, we will resume normal operations just as soon as our resilience tests of the DARPA National Infrastructure has been completed. No, Sir, that is within the parameters for 'an unscheduled spot test' as per SOP. Good day, Sir."

{Click}

{Typing noises as a Notice of SOP suddenly appears and gets backdated a week, with annoyed note about ensuring the mimeograph is working}

Microsoft vet laments a world where even toothbrushes need reboots

Re: My local hospital rebooted me!

> communicates them wirelessly

As a Norwegian security researcher found, easily read (2015, BBC Could hackers break my heart via my pacemaker? "She discovered it had not one, but two wireless interfaces.").

And, of course, they have been - less than perfect (2017, BBC Cyber-flaw affects 745,000 pacemakers).

Have we improved in the years since? I've got to go out to the opticians now, so if anyone else wants to start <insert preferred search engine here>ing...

Re: Mental

> To answer your question, electric tootbrushes[1]...

Electric toothbrushes can do good.

Electronic toothbrushes might do better, maintaining motor speed and recharging the battery.

Computerised toothbrushes are an absurdity.

[1] perhaps he had just read the story about the phone farts?

Re: Programmers not very good

Not convinced I want to go back to dragging out the flowchart template all the time (those got pretty big), but I wished[1] people would draw out more data structures by hand, in full, cons cells and back links, even if they are a bit rough'n'ready.

Tip: when a colleague shows you a complex system as a single side of A4 (worse, A3) covered in dense UML, print out a copy with a few quick changes (reverse an arrow, change a 1:n to an n:n ...) and see how long it takes for anyone to realise it is now gibberish! So many people can generate those damn things in one tool or another but that can not actually *read* them!

[1] out of that now

Re: This, we're told, is progress

> we accept what we're told because we want it to be true

Speak for yourself!

I'll admit when I've gone for the least worst option and lament that it does not represent "progress" outside of the minds of the cabal of marketeers.

'Abandoned' astro takes recordbreaking ninth spacewalk

Re: Astros?

The famous Mars Brothers, Cosmo, Astro and Taiko[1]. Fondly remembered for their work on the ISS in "Flywheel, Thruster and Flywheel"[2] and the famous IMAX film "A Night in the Orbit".[3]

[1] plus the boring one whose name nobody ever remembers - and the other one, remembered only by real fans, who never made it to a successful mission.

[2] although only Cosmo and Astro had major roles in this.

[3] a later film, to be called "Go West", was cancelled due to technical difficulties when it was pointed out they'd have to reverse course.

Tiny Linux kernel tweak could cut datacenter power use by 30%, boffins say

Re: if hardware is twice as fast next year

> re-ordering declarations so that all methods (presumed to be 64 bit pointers) came first

Ah, no.

If you have any virtual methods, then you have one pointer at the start of the instance, pointing to the VMT[1]. Any non-virtual take up no space in the instance, they are just normal functions in the object file.

[1] hopefully; if you inherited from a non-virtual base class then the VMT pointer is not at the start and you possibly more VMT pointers in odd places if you have been playing around with multiple inheritance; good luck trying to spot the padding bytes needed then!

[2] albeit with funky mangled names to make the magic work.

Asteroid as wide as 886 cans of spam may hit Earth in 2032

We'll need a lot of wrapping paper

And a very big bow.

According to planetary.org, the visit will be Dec. 22, 2032.[1]

Best to make a note to decorate the tree a few days early that year, just in case.

[1] good thing it isn't a Torino 10 or we'd all feel proper fools worrying about the end of the 32-bit epoch.

*spherical* sheep in a vacuum!

Arrr! Can a sailor's marlinspike fix a busted backplane?

Repair by moving some of the cards

'Ere was I, a-hopin' for a tale o' strugglin' against a knot in the CAT o' 5 tails. Droppin' the sorry mess that be comin' out o' the patch cabinet onto t'windlass and 'auling the server rack agin the 'eaving tides o' the treacherous raised floor.

Yah could a'least 'ave spliced the power cord.

Tesla's numbers disappoint again ... and the crowd goes wild ... again

Re: an alleged Nazi salute

I thought it was just a clumsy Roman salute[1] to Trumpus Caesar.

[1] although it should be steering forward not off to the side like that - hey, maybe that's the problem with FSD?

DeepSeek stirs intrigue and doubt across the tech world

We believe very strongly in understanding what's really going on

That is not the attitude to take if you want to be successful with an LLM chatbot.

Closing your eyes, crossing your fingers and hoping The Beast won't do anything to embarrass you before the IPO, that is the winning strategy.

Trump tells Musk to 'go get' Starliner astronauts

Re: Save fuel

"People are saying I am the greatest, trans, the greatest trans-Neptunian, ever."

Re: Stay up there.

Someone here has downvoted an xkcd?

Burn the heretic!

Boom's XB-1 jet nails supersonic flight for first time

Nurse! Nurse! He's off his meds again!

Re: My opinion

> the axial-flow jet engine itself

Hmm, anything to do with the UK admitting the US had a larger, and less war-damaged, industrial base available? So handed over all the work so far, after agreeing that we'd get back all the fixed & improvements?

Which the Yanks strangely forgot to do.

> So America has to take the idea

Take. Good word.