* Posts by John Savard

2459 publicly visible posts • joined 18 Sep 2007

Cloudflare stops offering to block LGBTQ webpages

John Savard

Circumstances

Blocking all sorts of content even remotely related to sexuality is certainly something that some people will want to do; traditionally-minded families with children.

But Cloudflare isn't a provider that home users turn to for parental controls. Given its line of business, viewing blocking LGBTQ content as something that could be regarded as discrimination is appropriate.

New IETF draft reveals Egyptians invented pyramids to sharpen razor blades

John Savard

Former Soviet Union

Ah, yes. This brings back memories, as it was the book "Psychic Discoveries Behind the Iron Curtain" which brought the notion of sharpening razor blades by placing them within something having the shape of the Great Pyramid of Giza to the world's attention.

Chinese AI censors live-streamed Alpacas – beasts with a very NSFW and political back story

John Savard

The Last Time I Heard That Pun

...was in a poem by Ogden Nash.

Or at least in a comment about it...

The one-L Lama,

He's a priest;

The two-L llama,

He's a beast.

And I will bet

A silk pyjama

There isn't any

Three-L lllama.

...to which someone commented that one can have a fire that is a "three alarmer".

AMD promises to spend $1.6bn on 12nm, 14nm chips from GlobalFoundries

John Savard

About Time!

Given that Intel's 11th generation chips, what with AVX-512, are not bad despite being still on 14nm, it's high time that AMD stopped having to compete with one hand tied behind it's back! Which, of course, makes it all the more amazing that it forged ahead of Intel despite Global Foundries' failure to be a worthwhile supplier to AMD by neglecting to upgrade its processes.

Ex Netflix IT ops boss pocketed $500k+ in bribes before awarding millions in tech contracts

John Savard

Fines?

He should have to fully reimburse Netflix for what he stole from them before he is allowed to pay a penny of either his fines or his taxes. Otherwise, after fines of twice what he stole, he might not have enough money to reimburse the victim for what was stolen, which should be the first priority.

Who'd have thought the US senator who fist pumped Jan 6 insurrectionists would propose totally unworkable anti-Big Tech law?

John Savard

He says "woke" like it's a bad thing.

There aren't two sides to what happened on January 6th of this year. The election was not stolen. Black people got to vote because safety measures made necessary by the pandemic (no legitimate controversy there; preventing the election from becoming a superspreader event was needed to save lives) made it possible for black people to evade voter suppression (everyone has the right to vote, and the election steal was a lie; that's a fact, not an opinion).

There aren't two sides to the invasion of Poland in 1939 either.

Certainly there was a time when both the Democratic and Republican parties represented legitimate political viewpoints. Both parties are playing to their base too much, but at the moment, it's only the Republican Party which has almost completely fallen prey to its lunatic fringe.

Excluding the lunatic fringe is not a departure from objectivity; to treat their views as though they were valid would be to mislead the reader severely.

John Savard

Not Difficult

He says "woke" like it's a bad thing.

That should be enough to tell everyone what he is.

Sadly, some Americans still don't realize that.

Not that everything called "woke" is perfect, or beyond debate - but being genuinely aware of the issues facing black Americans, as they see them from their perspective, not just from the imperfect perspective that even a liberal white person can have without help is obviously not only good, but necessary.

'Chinese wall'? Who uses 'Chinese wall'? Well, IBM did, and it actually means 'firewall'

John Savard

Ethical wall

A firewall is for filtering data going in or out of a network. I remember the term "Chinese wall" being used in news stories related to IBM, but it referred to the wall between the people who read the BIOS listing to figure out what it did and the people who were writing a BIOS to do the same thing on your PC clone, so that's probably what the term "ethical wall" is for.

How do we stamp out the ransomware business model? Ban insurance payouts for one, says ex-GCHQ director

John Savard

Depressing

This is a recommendation that will, as its immediate direct effect, inflict additional problems on some of the victims of ransomware. We should focus on good solutions, like making it much easier to back up computers or like making operating systems so secure that ransomware infections can't happen.

Beloved pixel pusher Paint prepares to join Notepad for updates from Microsoft Store

John Savard

Error

Microsoft Paint was introduced with Windows 95.

What Windows 3.1 had was Paintbrush.

Ice Lake, Baby: Intel's 10nm 3rd Gen Xeon Scalable server processors to arrive at last

John Savard

Re: Yawn...

That's not fair. Intel's 10nm chips have a feature size and transistor density comparable to what the competitors are selling as 7nm! Of course, that was more important before we knew that they didn't have comparable frequencies.

John Savard

What, not 14+++?

Is this a higher frequency 10nm process than the one Intel didn't use for the i9-11900K and its brethren because 10nm was too slow? Or perhaps business users don't need the high frequencies that gamers demand, and so a slower chip that uses less electricity works for them? Oh, I see: they've upped the core count, and database can do with throughput, it's gamers that need low latency.

UK terror law reviewer calls for expanded police powers to imprison people who refuse to hand over passwords

John Savard

Eliminating Abuse

I should think it's obvious what is needed to eliminate the police falsely claiming a case involves terrorism so they can get their nice juicy powers to unlock people's smartphones! In addition to terrorism, give them the same special powers in cases involving drug trafficking, since that's also such a pressing problem. Then the police will be using their special powers in exactly the way that is intended and written in the law!

Mysterious case of Arizona state senators skipping a vote on tackling Apple and Google's app commissions

John Savard

Obvious Explanation

I'm sure that the people of Arizona would be very upset if they could no longer get new apps for their smartphones, because Apple and Google decided to stop doing business in that state. So, once the legislators realized that it would be very stupid of them to try and make such a law, even if what they were hoping to achieve with that law was popular, this happened. Bribery isn't needed.

SK Hynix boss predicts CPUs and RAM will merge, chipmakers will hold hands to make it happen

John Savard

A Good Idea

Since a larger cache is one way to improve the performance of a CPU, having a wider-bandwidth pathway to memory would obviously bring benefits. Look at the innards of the NEC SX-9 supercomputer, which ties each of its CPUs directly to sixteen DRAM modules.

So not having to worry about pin count, not having to drive an external interface, would be greatly beneficial.

The problem, though, with going all the way to putting everything on a single die instead of just some type of module, the way HBM does already, is that die sizes are limited. Putting, say, eight cores and 16 gigabytes of DRAM on one die isn't likely to be possible for some time.

Of course, though, one thing chipmakers are looking for is a way to eliminate die size as a constraint. If you could have a multichip module where the connections between dies were essentially indistinguishable from on-die connections, imposing no additional delays or requirements for driviing, then, while major units like CPU cores would still have to be within a single die, cache and memory on other dies would be as good as on the same die.

Richard Stallman says he has returned to the Free Software Foundation board of directors and won't be resigning again

John Savard

Odd

If Marvin Minsky had associated with Epstein, while that could have been innocent on Minsky's part - and part of Epstein's cover - despite the esteem in which we hold Marvin Minsky for his accomplishments, suspicion is understandable. Although the article doesn't give details on whatever the controversy was, and the comments indicate that remarks were imputed to Stallman that he did not make, I suspect I would be more inclined to take Stallman's side than that of the FSF of the time based on what I see from the article.

EDIT: Ah, I see from another comment that, no, Stallman wasn't let go for being too "woke". However, if the comment that got him cancelled was mischaracterized, well, while I am strongly sympathetic to our new awareness of sexual violence against women, I still also oppose political correctness or cancel culture when it goes too far.

Trail of Bits security peeps emit tool to weaponize Python's insecure pickle files to hopefully now get everyone's attention

John Savard

Not Good News

This isn't just a proof-of-concept, it makes actual attacks easier.

It seems irresponsible to release it, therefore.

The only way there would be an "easy win for security" is if a drop-in replacement for pickling were available now. If that were the case, the article would have mentioned it.

It was, though, made clear in the article why pickling is essential, as it's the only way to distribute AI models without giving away their internals. The only alternative offered is switching to another language.

Memo to scientists. Looking for intelligent life? Have you tried checking for worlds with a lot of industrial pollution?

John Savard

Redefining Intelligent

Since we consider the human race which inhabits the Earth to be a valid example of intelligent life, it can't be argued that industrial pollution isn't evidence of intelligent life.

However, scientists looking for intelligent life aren't just looking for life exactly like ourselves. So, an indicator of intelligent life that would only assist in finding the few worlds which combine the cleverness needed to build technology with the stupidity that allows polluting the planet with it is of limited interest compared to one more general that might actually find life more intelligent than ourselves.

While Reg readers know the difference between a true hacker and cyber-crook, for everyone else, hacking means illegal activity

John Savard

My Understanding

When I first encountered the term "hacker", its meaning was clear.

It meant an individual with an obsession, sometimes unhealthy, and sometimes leading to illegal activity, with understanding fully the internals of computer systems.

On the one hand, the original meaning was at least somewhat pejorative, and being a hacker was strongly correlated to some degree of unauthorized use of computer systems.

On the other hand, the term in its original definition definitely does not apply to script kiddies. Or, indeed, most of the cyber crooks out there today.

While I am in favor of precise use of language, I also think that it will be an uphill battle to get the general public to use another term for virus and ransomware writers and users. I just wish they'd make our computer systems secure, so this stuff wouldn't be a thing any more.

Prime suspect: Amazon India apologises for offensive scenes in political thriller

John Savard

Re: Bad news

Except for the part about scheduled castes, the reason the content was deemed offensive in India had nothing to do with protecting minorities, and everything to do with protecting the feelings of the majority and protecting the government. That is a big difference.

John Savard

Dangerous

Amazon should not have made the mistake of attempting to do business in a country that isn't fully democratic. It's far too easy to make mistakes that can endanger people's lives and freedom.

It’s back: America's net neutrality advocates begin push to return to pre-Trump internet protections

John Savard

Re: We regularly see articles discussing US Net Neutrality

If the Republicans get elected in four years, it will definitely affect Europe. Learning to speak Russian may be advisable.

John Savard

One Step at a Time

First, revert to the situation before Trump. Then, address the issue of ensuring that the American people will never again vote to unleash such a calamity upon the American people as the Trump administration.

At the moment, it doesn't look good. It looks like after four years of a Biden administration, the energy won't be there to win another very close election. Legislation to make voter suppression impossible, and statehood for Puerto Rico and Washington D.C. will help.

India's demand to identify people on chat apps will 'break end-to-end encryption', say digital rights warriors

John Savard

Tiring

It's alreacy well known that Narendra Modi and his party support discriminating against minority groups in India. Therefore, the obvious response should be to revoke India's independence, and try again after the country's people have reached a sufficient level of political maturity to live in harmony together, or after the country has been adequately partitioned - without bloodshed - so that each of the major groups is securely in its own nation where it has no fear of being pushed around by a majority from a different group.

And this is also the way to deal with Myanmar; any attacks on minorities, any departure from democracy should mean immediate regime change.

Of course, the potential problem of interference from Russia and China will first have to be dealt with.

Huawei loses attempt to rescue CFO Meng from US clutches despite using 140-year-old law in High Court

John Savard

Re: Don't break my laws but I can break your laws

Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor have already been arrested.

John Savard

Re: Don't break my laws but I can break your laws

The pandemic is real, but we have only a few more painful months to wait before vaccines are broadly available. It should only take weeks after that for there to be no longer a serious problem.

John Savard

Hostage?

Sorry, the only hostages in this series of events are Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor.

It's too bad the United States is not in a position to do Canada the favor of bringing about regime change in China.

House Republicans introduce legislation for outright ban on municipal broadband in the US

John Savard

Re: Great way to lose voters

I don't think that this is a particular concern. The phrase "poor Republican" almost qualifies as an oxymoron.

John Savard

Pity

...that the United States Constitution might stand in the way of the Democratic members of the House and Senate passing a bill prohibiting any attempt by any State to restrict or prohibit municipal broadband.

Google QUIC-ly left privacy behind in its quest for a speedier internet, boffins find

John Savard

Numbers

So the attack accuracy on HTTPS is 33% then, as "73% higher" is meant in its usual sense; 1.73 times 33 is 57. Some people would say that 57% is only 24% higher than 33%, because they would want to use the same base for the difference as for attack accuracy on QUIC so as to stick to addition and subtraction instead of multiplication.

Severe bug in Libgcrypt – used by GPG and others – is a whole heap of trouble, prompts patch scramble

John Savard

New Language or New OS?

Having programmed on an IBM mainframe, under the easy-to-use MTS operating system, I know that buffer overflows were basically unknown in that world.

But this was because of how I/O worked on that system, being record-oriented instead of character-oriented. It was not because the languages we used had array bounds checking or similar features that come with an overhead cost.

If it were possible to fix these frequent issues by going from C to a language that is a viable alternative to C, because like C, it is compiled and doesn't include built-in features involving significant overhead, such as array bounds-checking, that would be great. But I think that this is not the case, and changing to another language means changing to something like C# or Swift.

Maybe, while waiting for change in the operating systems, we could compromise by putting bounds-checking where it is needed: in the I/O library, rather than in the whole language?

Quixotic Californian crusade to officially recognize the hellabyte and hellagram is going hella nowhere

John Savard

Won't Fly

Obviously there would be strong opposition to such a prefix from the United States, where many people take any kind of blasphemous swearing very seriously!

It's almost as bad as taking the Lord's name in vain!

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey says Trump ban means the service has failed

John Savard

Re: "a failure of ours ultimately to promote healthy conversation"

Why shouldn't we celebrate the overthrow of dictators in the Middle East, or the struggle against police violence against black Americans?

That the nation continued to focus on the lives lost in police shootings, instead of allowing itself to be distracted by the unfortunate actions of a small minority was a good thing.

And if the election had really been stolen from Trump, it would also be a good thing if we didn't let the violence of January 6th distract us from righting this wrong... but, of course, it hadn't been.

John Savard

Confused

I can definitely imagine a decentralized tool that nobody can control that makes it possible to spread lies and hatred faster than they can be refuted. A decentralized tool nobody is controlling that helps promote civilized conversation?

It's obvious that now is the time to invest in Twitter. Their stock will shoot up after they figure out how to turn lead into gold.

It's been a day or so and nope, we still can't wrap our head around why GitHub would fire someone for saying Nazis were storming the US Capitol

John Savard

Re: Communist = Nazist

It's not a false equivalence to equate two movements that established totalitarian dictatorships with cruel slave labor camps.

That's true even though the ideological window-dressing of Communism is largely in accord with universal moral principles, whereas Nazism let some of its hatred show on the surface.

But what does have to be remembered is the Red Scare of the 1920s and McCarthyism, compared to the kid glove treatment Nazi sympathizers got in the United States. The U.S. only joined World War II after Pearl Harbor, while it fought Communism in Korea and Vietnam - which would have been like the U.S. joining World War II after Mussolini invaded Ethiopia, and continuing on to fight the Nazis during the Spanish Civil War.

That wasn't because the United States learned its lesson from the consequences of appeasement in World War II, although the changed reality due to nuclear weapons did also play a role. The main reason running through this like a thread is that Big Business feared the Communists would make labor unions more uppity.

But the trouble is that Communism really is evil, so it's a tragedy that many liberals in the United States ended up being convinced by McCarthyism that the evils of Communism were nothing more than a right-wing hoax. This is a lesson from history from which we must learn.

John Savard

Re: The problem

But the fact that they believed those lies only shows that they wre stupid, not that they were evil.

To me, it's just evidence of the ironic absurdity of the world we live in that people can be heroic patriots (in their hearts) and terrorists (by their actions) at the same time. And so I wouldn't be against including some mercy, along with severity, in our handling of some of the Capitol intruders. But not the guy with the zip-tie handcuffs, obviously.

United States Congress stormed by violent followers of defeated president, Biden win confirmation halted

John Savard

Doubling Down

Today, Sunday, January 10, 2010, at 11 AM Washington D. C. time, President Donald Trump will address a crowd about to engage in what is called the "Save America March".

Maybe this time it will be peaceful, and the crowd will not try to break into any buildings. Yeah, right.

EDIT: My mistake. While what I saw was a YouTube livestream, it was a livestream of a recording of the "Save America March" of July 6. So a repetition of the events of that day is not imminent.

John Savard

Re: I wonder ...

Mike Pence tweeted that? Oh, dear, now he really is in disagreement with Trump, wanting to throw the book at these fine people.

John Savard

Re: Burn it to the ground

Repealing Section 230, however, was intended to force social media to accept more stuff from Trump and his supporters, not reject it. So that isn't the way to go.

Canadian Windows demands a jolly good bit of validating

John Savard

Re: We don't even have a president

Pricey stuff? It's the upper-tier generics, so it's pricier than the really cheap stuff, but still cheaper than the national brands.

John Savard

It Isn't Trump

It's the President (and CEO, I presume) of Loblaws, the grocery chain that operates Loblaws, Real Canadian Superstore, and NoFrills. Not Donald Trump, so there's no increased chance of things going wrong for that reason.

It's just a pair of arrows. What could be more innocent than that?

John Savard

This Reminds Me

I remember reading, from cover to cover, the controversial book about this issue.

My impression is that, while the author felt strongly about the matter, and presented his case as a damning indictment of IBM, he also stayed true to the facts...

and the facts he cited gave a picture of a company which, within the limits faced by a private company, did an exemplary job of doing everything it could to prevent misuse of its products, services, and technology by the Nazis.

Let the chips fall where they may: US Commerce dept whacks Middle Kingdom firm SMIC on naughty list

John Savard

Holes

What concerns me is the news that TSMC has built a 7nm fab inside the People's Republic of China. Since that is physically within the country, if the PRC decides it needs 7nm chips for its military, it could steal it. Of course, then they wouldn't be able to fool TSMC that way again, but if one really wants to keep technology below 14nm out of China's hands, isn't a more comprehensive approach required?

Tim Cook 'killed' TV project about the one website Apple hates more than The Register

John Savard

Re: Well, of course

In real life, bad guys use iPhones a lot... because their encryption is harder to crack.

iPhone factory workers riot over unpaid wages in India

John Savard

Re: Barf

Huawei: that's the company that's holding Kovrig and Spavor hostage, isn't it?

John Savard

Strange

I can understand why the government of India would rather not have riots.

However, surely they have an option. Seize the factory, run it properly, prosecute the owners, and make sure the workers are paid on time.

Adios California, Oracle the latest tech firm to leave California for the wide open (low tax) Lone Star State

John Savard

Re: Go west young man no more?

So you can't find peace of mind in San Jose any more?

NEC to sell the accelerator cards it puts into supercomputers – for about $11,000 a pop

John Savard

Cost per TFlop

AMD's new MI100 Instinct accelerator card offers 11.5 Teraflops of 64-bit double-precision floating-point oomph, and is probably somewhat less expensive than the NEC card with only 2.45 Teraflops, but still in the same ballpark.

But the NEC card does have an important advantage. Accelerator cards are designed like GPUs, and so they can only perform a fairly restricted type of calculations.

The NEC card, on the other hand, is architecturally similar to the Cray I computer and similar vector supercomputers. As a result, a larger fraction of a typical calculation can take advantage of those 2.45 Teraflops of vector power. As well, it isn't an accelerator card - it's a self-contained computer, and so the scalar parts of the calculation are also performed within the card, so delays in moving data in or out of the card do not take place during a calculation.

Apple's global security boss accused of bribing cops with 200 free iPads in exchange for concealed gun permits

John Savard

Re: Why do Apple employees need to carry guns ?

What has national security got to do with it?

Apple products sell at high prices, and so they're an attractive target for thieves.

Thieves are likely to be armed.

If Apple's security guards have guns, fewer robberies will take place.

John Savard

Re: Why do Apple employees need to carry guns ?

There have been incidents of Apple products being stolen from trucks and so on.

Also, in the United States, there is a high chance of criminals being armed.