Posts by Necrohamster

Linus Torvalds flames Google kernel contributor over filesystem suggestion

Re: A better long-term approach...

Wow dude, your “Micr0$haft” insult and Microsoft’s “Halloween Documents” take on FOSS date back to 1998. Step forward in time to 2024…you might like it.

Re: Linus being shouty is not really news

"A shouting match at work is completely unprofessional, and rarely achieves the desired outcome, as people get their backs up, and simply harden their positions. A quiet word over a coffee, after a meeting to point out the failures is a million times more effective."

Agreed. The guy appears to have some unresolved mental health issues and may see some benefit from counselling and antidepressant medication.

The sad thing is that many people in the comments seem to view this abusive behaviour as amusing or quirky. It's not.

Microsoft sheds some light on Russian email heist – and how to learn from Redmond's mistakes

Re: "Midnight Blizzard targeted other organisations"

The relevant paragraph actually reads:

Using the information gained from Microsoft’s investigation into Midnight Blizzard, Microsoft Threat Intelligence has identified that the same actor has been targeting other organizations and, as part of our usual notification processes, we have begun notifying these targeted organizations.

To me that says they had telemetry which identifies the same TTPs in other companies.

I don't see anything that suggests they were making excuses for what happened, or trying to deflect blame.

Wait, security courses aren't a requirement to graduate with a computer science degree?

"He has also been in the forefront of those urging the professionalization of "software engineering" (a term that he characterizes as "an unconsummated marriage"). Dr. Parnas is also a heavy promoter of ethics in the field of software engineering...”

Professionalization...hmmmm.

The problem is that, in many parts of the world including the United States, the title "Engineer" isn't protected. Any charlatan can call themselves an engineer without education or training.

Project management, and Java or Python classes mostly

Re: Slightly different slant

Imagine implementing an engineering project in a sprint cycle. Enough said.

"You also undertake a group project which reflects current industrial practice."

Where a group project is concerned, any fule kno that between 25% and 75% of the group may be involved in a non-participating or non-practical way :D Theoretically they could pass without doing any practical work

Re: A purely theoretical curriculum

I'm sad I have only one upvote to give you for that comment

However, a person who calls themselves a software "engineer" is rarely (if ever) an actual engineer.

"Security in a computer science context should be things like memory safety, race conditions, process isolation. That stuff IS covered by CompSci degrees (certainly the one I took anyway) despite the alarmist headline."

Interesting that you mention context, and then give an out-of-context interpretation of the article's subject matter. Why would CISA – the US government's cybersecurity agency – tell developers to concern themselves with "things like memory safety, race conditions, process isolation"?

That's a pretty blinkered view. How many CVE's are disclosed every day?

Writing insecure software is bad, okay? Programmers should take some responsibility for the crappiness of their code, and try to do better.

Not surprising

In my CS degree, the closest I got to cybersecurity was a "cyberethics" module which was little more than filler. The lecturer himself had little enthusiasm for the subject and avoided any tangential discussion about security.

Secure coding is something you need to learn on your own, it seems.

Apple redecorates its iPhone prison to appease Europe

Re: The Law Has No Teeth

"The point is that Apple is blatantly violating the intention and spirit of the law..."

"Intention and spirit of the law" sound like aspirational items to me.

The only thing they (and the courts) need to worry about is that they met the actual requirements which were specified in the law.

"While legal experts expect the EU to challenge Apple's insincere compliance with the DMA..."

Dear lawmakers...if you're annoyed by malicious compliance, you didn't do a very good job setting the rules to begin with.

Top Linux distros drop fresh beats

After all these years, the Linux world still doesnt understand how to convert Windows users

Why do most Linux distributions look like the desktop interface was created by a twelve-year-old or someone who used one of those skin packs for Windows 95?

Seeing the comments here about what Linux users think people coming from Windows want makes me scratch my head. I'll tell you what they want...not having to fuck around customising desktop environments or troubleshooting nvidia driver versions.

They don't want a boy-racer-Vauxhall-Corsa of an OS that needs constant attention. Give them something that works without needing a BSc in Computing, or an on-call nerd in the family. Ubuntu will be fine thanks.

The Land Before Linux: Let's talk about the Unix desktops

Re: Proprietary

The person you're replying to doesn't get "tongue in cheek", only literal interpretations.

Virgin Media comes top of the flops for customer complaints

SWMBO is called regularly by her sister who iives a few hundred yards away and neither of us is in Bangalore.

Ok, ok. Doctor Syntax's wife and sister-in-law are the only people who make calls on landlines, apart from scammers in Bangalore.

Don't take everything so literally, doctor. You'll live longer.

And so it is with most companies - customer support is a necessary evil that's not worth any kind of expenditure whatsoever. Which people here know isn't true...

"...offering to send out an engineer to your home to solve a problem that is keeping half the bloody town off-line."

Funny you mention this as a couple of my neighbours have been complaining about slow downloads and dropping offline all the time (they have the same ISP). Every time they call the ISP, they're sent a new router. I guess it's the only thing the lowly customer service person is allowed to do, as some kind of token gesture. Maybe after the 5th or 6th or 7th router, the problem will resolve itself.

It doesn't seem to be possible to escalate the problem to someone who can query the equipment at the exchange (or junction box/whatever), much less notice that several people in the same area are having the same problem.

I'd just do without the expense, and not have a landline at all. :D

What will telcos do when they realise nobody under the age of 40 wants to make or receive *any* calls?

If one of my kids was kidnapped, they'd text me.

Even my Mum doesn't use a landline anymore and she's old as the hills.

The only people who call landlines these days are scammers in Bangalore.

Anecdotal evidence, I know, but the Virgin broadband service has always been 10/10 for me...I can't fault it.

The shocker for me is that there are people still using landlines out there.

Top-tier IT talent doesn't stick around in 'mid-market' organizations

"WIth some SaaS services (particularly things like databases) the cloud providers will be responsible for most of this..."

All I'll say about this is "make sure your legal advisor reads your contract carefully".

I'd prefer to think of it as "water finds its own level". Good staff gravitate to good companies and vice versa.

"Mid" isn't a compliment. Ask any teenager :D

Re: Ladder

"If you stay with your current employer, you are unlikely going to get a raise beyond inflation."

What is this raise thing you speak of?

Man I need to update my CV.

Re: No surprise

"When I left my last company I told everyone who needed to know where all my electronic log books and guides were stored....

...I got a very panicked call from the new Software Manager a few years later who had to upgrade an embedded OS in a range of products I had looked after.

...I got him to open the index of my guides on his browser, pointed him to the one that said "upgrading the OS" and told him to follow the instructions.."

Knowledge isn't free. You missed an opportunity to create a lucrative consulting position.

C'mon, do you guys even read BOFH or what?

Musk lashes out at Biden administration over rural broadband

If Elmo has proven anything it's that, time and time again, he can't be trusted

"...in 2020, the FCC secured a commitment from Starlink to offer high-speed internet for just $1,377 per location."

That guy can't be trusted to honour his agreements. Any "commitment" (to his employees, to governments, to anyone or anything...) is as much use as a chocolate teapot.

The Pentagon was funding Starlink in Ukraine, but the service was mysteriously degraded or turned off at the time of Russian offensives in Crimea.

Even though he presents as a libertarian-type businessman, it seems his companies exist to wangle as many government subsidies as possible...rather than be successful due to their own merits.

Wanna run Windows on an M-series Mac? Fine, buy a license, but no baremetal

lol so you're saying that Google was happy to take a 30% cut of revenue until they were forced by Apple's actions to lower their cut to 15%? Well it took them seven months to follow Apple's lead, but better late than never eh?

That's not the winning argument you think it is.

But the commentards would have us believe Apple's the bad guy here.

Re: In my experience

Indeed. Life's too short for dealing with toxic people like that.

Re: GIMP

And yet GIMP couldn't handle CYMK until recently. Let's face it, it's an interesting FOSS project but it's not ready for even semi-professional use.

While GIMP developers may be proficient from a technical standpoint, I don't believe they understand what people want or need.

It's like they woke up one day and decided to build an application without talking to anybody who actually uses Photoshop in their job. I've noticed time and time again that there are FOSS developers out there who think they know best, and that they can't (or shouldn't) take direction from non-developers i.e. the end users of their software.

If GIMP works for your use-case, congratulations! But that doesn't mean it's going to work for everyone else's.

Never heard of it before. It looks interesting, thanks!

"It's not free at all - it's included in the price of the hardware."

Nope. You're being disingenuous again.

You can download every version of macos since LIon 10.7 (which was released in 2010) from the Apple support site, or newer versions through the app store.

For free. No purchase of Apple hardware required.

Re: Windows is no longer a necessity...

"But GIMP is dogshit, it really is."

100%

"They sell the hardware but make the profit on the Apple store. Charging you a 30% fee on all your software/music/avocado-toast buys on non-Apple hardware might be appealing"

According to AppRadar, Apple charges 30% only after you do $1million in sales. It's 15% up to $1million or if you're a new developer on the App Store.

Google will charge you 30% for apps and in-app products across the board. What do Play Store users put on their toast? :D

Really?

In the Intel CPU days I'd do a fresh install on a physical machine, take the disk out and run a P2V tool on it. Import to VMWare and job's a good 'un.

Or you can go down the Inception route and use Carbon Copy Cloner to image the disk to an external disk, then create a new VM in Vmware Fusion using the external disk as the source.

"If the OS is so free, why can't I be licenced to run it on a Windows PC?"

It's free as in beer (i.e. there's no monetary cost), but you knew that already.

Please don't be disingenuous.

The first line of the macos EULA says "For use on Apple-branded Systems", so I'm guessing the answer is never.

Nothing stopping you from making a Hackintosh on a Surface Pro X in the comfort of your own home though

Logitech warns of logistical impact of Houthi attacks in Red Sea

Planes, Trains and Automobiles

Too bad any China-Europe rail link needs to go through Russia.

I can't see the planned southern route through Iran and Turkey happening for some reason...

Datacenters could account for a third of Ireland's electricity by 2026

Re: This is why we can't have [nice] things.

Nothing to do with green credentials. The country was still burning Russian coal after the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. It's probably that it's the cheapest available option.

But I'd love to know how it's practical (or even sustainable) to ship woodchips one-third of the way around the world, and burn the stuff in a power plant. The carbon footprint of the entire process must be mind-boggling.

Re: Domestic and Datacenters price per kWh

The relevant part:

"Ireland, the United Kingdom, and Italy had some of the highest household electricity prices worldwide, as of June 2023. At the time, Irish households were charged around 0.52 U.S. dollars per kilowatt-hour, while in the UK the price stood at 0.44 U.S. dollars per kilowatt-hour. By comparison, in the United States, residents paid almost three times less."

This is why we can't have [nice] things.

I think the Irish government would love to see the country covered in datacenters, despite the facts they create minimal employment and use an insane amount of electricity.

Householders unknowingly subsidised big businesses' electricity bills for more than disclosed €600m

"Householders unwittingly subsidised big businesses’ electricity bills for 12 years at a cost even higher than the €600m previously disclosed, the energy regulator has said.

The ‘large energy user (LEU) rebalancing subvention’ was devised to take €50m in annual network charges off large companies, adding it to domestic customers’ bills instead.

This arrangement ran from 2010 to 2022, but a lookback by the Commission for the Regulation of Utilities (CRU) has found an “implementation issue”.

The way the arrangement was implemented meant that “more than the amount approved in the CRU decision was passed to LEU customers”."

Why Irish electricity prices are among the highest in Europe

"Prices have hit dizzying heights in Ireland, but would have been even higher without renewable power>

...

"the energy cost was only 48 per cent of Irish bills in 2022, with the average across the EU even lower, at 45 per cent. However, because Irish bills are so much higher than the EU average, the Irish energy component in absolute terms was 36 per cent higher than the EU average."

...

"Wholesale prices across the EU are largely driven by one thing – the share of gas generation. The more gas generation a country has, the higher the bills. The majority of Irish electricity is generated by gas"

Journey of a Brazilian Wood Chip: Trekking Over 7,500km to Power Ireland’s Bord na Móna Offaly Plant!

+

"The Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine (DAFM) hasannounced the first findingsin Ireland ofa non-European bark beetlePseudips mexicanus known as the MontereyPine Engraver."

Coincidence?

Re: A modest proposal

Plenty of British immigrants who could do that…

Russia takes $13.5M bite out of Apple over in-app purchases

The idea of bricking phones, while appealing, is a slippery slope.

Could cutting off access to the app store, updates, iCloud etc for a geographical area be do-able? A "Great Firewall of China" in reverse... But then, people will just use VPNs...although VPNs have a sketchy history in Russia..

Somebody's already mentioned IBM in the context of its sales to Germany during WWII. If a company wants to make a quick buck during a war, it will...

I'm not sure how you came to the conclusion that they're "100% being a monopoly". Apple isn't selling phones in RU.

The RU government got around this little problem by allowing grey market imports from unsanctioned countries like Kyrgyzstan or Kazakhstan

Re: “Russian Federal Antimonopoly Service”

Mafia country...mafia rules.

Pay the fine and...

...implement blocks to prevent Russia, Belarus and any associated countries from using their products and services.

If they've exited the market as the article says, there's no financial incentive to continue allowing access.

UK water giant admits attackers broke into system as gang holds it to ransom

They're obliged to report the data breach to the ICO, so that a fine/smack on the wrist/etc can be dished out.

In the words of Chief Wiggum: "We're powerless to help you, not to punish you"

BreachForums admin 'Pompourin' sentenced to 20 years of supervised release

"...site used to share information on security issues"

That's quite a description for a forum that distributed stolen data and child pornography.

It's in no way comparable to Shodan.

Here's the Wikipedia page to bring you up to speed.

Politicos demand full list of Fujitsu's public sector contract wins in wake of Post Office scandal

Musical Chairs

You could ban Fujitsu from ever getting another government contract, but are HPE, ATOS, Tata etc any better in terms of the quality of their work?

As a former EDS employee who's been involved in some less-than-successful gov contracts, I'll just leave that as a rhetorical question...

Huawei prepares to split from Android on consumer devices with HarmonyOS Next

Re: Learning is now theft!?!?

Wow.

You accuse someone of making a straw man argument, and then proceed to make your own straw man by accusing a whole country of intellectual property theft. We could probably add "guilt by association" and "ad hominem" to the list of logical fallacies you make.

In any case your erroneous, xenophobic argument is tangential to any discussion of forking of one OS from another. Isn't AOSP is an open source project which people are free to develop and adapt?

"It can offer to install apps from outside the AppGallery but it notifies you of the fact."

This is more of the hacky, clunky crap I was talking about: sending users to third-party apk download sites if the AppGallery doesn't have what they're looking for.

That's not acceptable for any app store, but only someone with a technical background might understand the implications.

If the APK download site gets compromised, every Huawei user that's downloaded something from it could also be compromised.