Posts by glennsills

Azure VMs ruined by CrowdStrike patchpocalypse? Microsoft has recovery tips

Human intervention is needed.

The problem here is that people who own/lease Windows systems, including VMs, are automatically updating software that can bring those systems down. This automated updating system saves tons of money in payroll expenses, but a simple, "Let's try this release on a sandbox and see how things work before we roll it out to every system" would be prudent. If you are an airline, and airport, a healthcare system (NHS, really?), or any other system that must run continuously, you shouldn't be trusting your vendors to be perfect. I understand that business want to save money, but until businesses that own software take some responsibility for maintenance of that software, this kind of problem will continue to happen.

And no, having AI check out the software is not a solution. :-)

Second NHS IT system confirmed to be affected by CrowdStrike issues

Ironic Name

Hey, it looks like CrowdStrike really is a cloud strike! Get it? Cloud strike. People naming companies should really think things throw.

Americans abroad cut off as AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile US suffer roaming outages

Hope they had Signal.

Google ponders making AI search a premium option

Great Idea

I love this idea! I hate it when I get introduced to AI and I haven't asked for it. If I have to pay for it I will not have to endure it.

Ransomware can mean life or death at hospitals. DEF CON hackers to the rescue?

Re: Another solution...

This is where we need Hillary Clinton to step into action - just like she did with Jeffry Epstien...

It's crazy but it's true: Apple rejected Bing for wrong answers about Annie Lennox

Well yeah, but Annie Lennox! How can you not get that right?

Tesla owners in deep freeze discover the cold, hard truth about EVs

Re: Norway

I was about to enter your post when I saw that you had gotten there first.

Not all EV cars are created equal. I suspect that Teslas perform best in a California coastal climate - not too hot and not too cold. Perhaps if you live in Canada you should check out the cars that work well in Norway...

https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1127488_test-of-20-evs-in-cold-norway-no-big-surprises-but-some-lost-more-range-than-others#:~:text=Electric%20cars%20also%20generally%20charge%20slower%20in%20cold,80%25%20in%2027%20minutes%20during%20January%20in%20Norway.

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

If you are charging for it, you should be responsible for it.

Twitter name and blue bird logo to be 'blowtorched' off company branding

Missing the point

Sadly, Elon does not realize that the one thing he could do that would most help his companies brand is selling it to someone else.

Microsoft’s Dublin DC power plant gets the, er, green light

Global warming? Meh!

The way things are going, Ireland will have weather like Bali.

SpaceX's second attempt at orbital Starship launch ends in fireball

Fake until you make it

Very reminiscent of the Boring Company and the NY <-> DC Hyperloop.

Musk said Twitter would open source its algorithm – then fired the people who could

Making source code "Open Source" is not that hard

Making software open source is only difficult if you want to keep some of the code closed source. The more code you want to keep secret the more difficult it is, but simplistically, making code open source is no more than putting the code in a public repository and adding an opensource license agreement.

I suspect the problem with making the "algorithm" that twitter uses to promote tweets open source is that it is not centralized into any sort of module, it is just little bits of spaghetti code mixed in everywhere. That would mean that a) Twitter would need to make most of its code open source, b) open itself up to criticism of writing crap code. That said, it is unlikely that anyone would take the code and create another Twitter with it.

Twitter tweaks third-party app rules to ban third-party apps

Re: Be Thankful because

Thankfully, he is not. Things could be much worse on World Peace and vaccinations front.

Does anyone else get the impression that Musk does not understand how social networks work?

FCC calls for mega $300 million fine for massive US robocall campaign

Tougher Penalties

The penalty for these crimes should be to spend 5 minutes per call in a jail cell with a cell phone that is constantly being spammed. Just 5 minutes per call.

'What's the point of me being in my office, just because they want to see me in the office?'

Managers want to see the bodies

Three things:

1) Many major corporations hold real estate investments in office properties whose values have dropped due to lack of demand.

2) There is an entire class of employees that do nothing but oversee other employees. There is often a pyramid structure of employees managing other employees. If the employees at the top of the pyramid do not see the employees at the bottom, it is difficult for them to understand what the managers at the lower levels are needed.

3) Many managers feel their job is mostly making sure workers keep their nose to the grindstone. How can they do that without walking around and watching their employees? Monitoring the actual work being done is much harder.

Windows 10 – a 7-year-old OS – is still having problems with the desktop and taskbar

Is time to move on to Windows 11?

Although to be fair, I never had these particular problems on Windows 10. It is important to keep in mind that when software is installed on 1.3 billion devices, devices of all sorts, managed in all sorts of ways and with all sorts of software installed on it, bugs will surface. This happens on Linux from time to time too, on a much smaller installed base. Don't get me started about my wife's iPad.

Linux Mint 21 hits beta, and it's looking fresh

Fresh? It looks like Windows 10.

Google says open source software should be more secure

Worth every penny we pay for it!

The problem with open source is people, especially businesspeople, think of "open-source software" as "free software". To the extent it is free, people are getting what they paid for, often much more. Having the big companies throw money at the problem will not fix the problem either, Building a secure application requires that all packages be secure - fixing just the key ones does not help.

It takes more clicks to reject their cookies than accept them, so France fines Facebook and Google over €200m

I would say that 90% of the cookie opt-in procedures make it much easier to opt-in than opt out. There should be three options on the dialog:

1. Opt-out - (May provide a warning that things might not work properly)

2. Opt-in Fully (Should indicate what you are getting yourself into)

3. Opt-in to cookies used for distinct reasons - this should provide a method of selecting cookies used for website operation, marketing cookies, performance measurement cookies, ...

Anything other than this is an attempt to get consent for marketing cookies.

Remember Norton 360's bundled cryptominer? Irritated folk realise Ethereum crafter is tricky to delete

There has been malware that installs bots on computers for a long time. Anti-malware programs like Norton try to block them, often with success. In this case Norton is installing a bot that works for Norton. Yes, the owner of the Norton license gets most of the money, but that does not change the fact that Norton is using its customers' computers to make money via crypto mining. This is a clear conflict of interest. At the very least, the opt-in policy should be much more explicit, and the executable should not even be downloaded unless the user explicitly agrees.

The is one of the reasons I use Windows Security instead of a third-party anti-malware program. Microsoft's motivation is to protect the reputation of Windows, and that's it. The third-party tools are scrambling to make a dollar and will occasionally do this sort of drive-by install.

Dutch nuclear authority bans anti-5G pendants that could hurt their owners via – you guessed it – radiation

Re: They're an unncessary expense anyway.

Funny. Very mean if anyone is stupid enough to do it and yes, those people do exist... but funny.

My wife the teacher uses this technique to produce rockets for younger kids.

Log4j doesn't just blow a hole in your servers, it's reopening that can of worms: Is Big Biz exploiting open source?

Was CloudFlare open source?

Microsoft gives Notepad a minimalist makeover to match Windows 11 style

Seriously? A whole world of possible notepad enhancements out there and "Dark Mode" was the number one ask?

GPU makers increasingly disengage from crypto miners

In my opinion, miners are just playing games. This is not to say that there is not serious money to be made in crypto by convincing other people to give them their money. Crypto is the Theranos scam on steroids.

Microsoft previews Visual Studio 2022 for Mac, but why bother when VS Code runs just fine on Apple hardware?

While I really like Visual Code a lot and use it ~80% of the time (running in WSL2) I occasionally use Visual Studio for "interesting" debugging issues. The debugger in VS Code is generally adequate but it isn't great.

There is a vim plugin for VS Code (and I believe even for Visual Studio but not sure). One of the charms of VS Code is that it is a popular target for these sorts of extensions.