* Posts by phuzz

6715 publicly visible posts • joined 23 Feb 2010

Press 1 for automagic K8s cluster. Press 2 or 3 for complex Kubernetes

phuzz Silver badge

I suppose if you wait long enough, all acronyms in IT get reused, but I keep assuming that K8 is referring to the AMD K8 architecture that brought us the Athlon64, back the last time that AMD was making competitive CPUs.

It's not really explained what K8 is supposed to refer to in the article so I guess I'l keep on assuming it's an old CPU architecture.

German researchers defeat printers' doc-tracking dots

phuzz Silver badge

Re: GDPR?

Presumably the argument is that if you buy the printer, and hand out print-outs, then it's you spreading your own personal information. Perhaps you could sue yourself?

Reality Winner, liberty loser: NSA leaker faces 63 months in the cooler

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Thumb Up

"Trump-backed entertainment channel Fox News"

Almost hid that bit of snark there elReg ;)

Or should I say 'Vulture-backed IT news site, elReg'.

UK Foreign Office offers Assange a doctor if he leaves Ecuador embassy

phuzz Silver badge

Re: Many things but not a traitor to the US

"That never prevented American-born Irish William Joyce (Lord Haw-Haw) being executed as a traitor by Britain, despite never having been British."

He had had a British passport (which he'd lied about his nationality to get), and the court decided that that made him a British citizen and thus a traitor. He appealed but was turned down, so legally yes he was a British citizen, as far as the British judicial system of the time was concerned.

WPA3 is the magic number? Protocol refresh promises tighter Wi-Fi security

phuzz Silver badge

Re: ROFL

"Hands up how many of you run a separate (secure) router INSIDE of the ISP provided one that does get upgrades?"

We did, until an obscure bug in the Virgin (not-so)Superhub would drop our connection every fifteen minutes until we took it out of modem mode and removed the proper router.

It's probably fixed not, maybe I should have another go at setting it up.

White House calls its own China tech cash-inject ban 'fake news'

phuzz Silver badge

Re: Bah!

You know, if the wall went along the Canadian border as well, and then down both coasts, all finished off with a big roof right over the top, then I think the rest of the world might happily chip in. As long as there's no doors left.

UK taxman has amassed voice profiles of 5.1 million taxpayers

phuzz Silver badge

"HMRC ... is developing a new process which will be operated on the basis of the explicit consent of the customer."

And how will that work?

".. if you do not wish for your voice ID to be recorded, please hang up now"

Yep, that'll be really helpful when you need to get your taxes sorted.

GDPR forgive us, it's been one month since you were enforced…

phuzz Silver badge

Re: disappointed...

I was surprised by how many recruitment agencies had picked up my CV from somewhere, and were sheepishly sending me GDPR emails, asking pretty-please could they keep my data. My 'unsubscribe' finger got a lot of work out (not that I subscribed in the first place).

Software changed the world, then died on the first of the month

phuzz Silver badge

Re: Not quite the end of the month....

If you're only introducing one bug per version, then you're doing pretty well.

Norwegian tourist board says it can't a-fjord the bad publicity from 'Land of Chlamydia' posters

phuzz Silver badge
Pint

Re: At 11 quid a pint

Mind you, I'd expect large families from those that do pair off.

After all, what else are you going to do in the evenings if going down the pub is too expensive?

Have YOU had your breakfast pint? Boffins confirm cheeky daily tipple is good for you

phuzz Silver badge
Unhappy

Re: A breakfast pint?

If I start drinking before about 5 then it'll end up being an early night for me. It's terrible, I'm not even 40 yet and my drinking levels are below when I started :(

Accountants HATE them: Microsoft's Xbox harnesses blockchain to pay games publishers

phuzz Silver badge

Re: Why blockchain?

I think you might have actually hinted at the answer to your own question.

As we know, Microsoft prefer to use their own products in house. I'm guessing someone at MS had a bright idea for a blockchain based accounting system (based in the cloud for added buzzwordiness), and they looked around the company until they found a problem that it could be bodged into solving.

In this case it happened to be the Xbox royalties division who got to be the guinea pigs.

By gum, that's chewy: Samsung's NF1 fattens M.2 card capacity with wider gumstick format

phuzz Silver badge

Re: Another standard?

It looks like you could bodge-fit one into a current M2 slot, depending on the components around it.

How a tax form kludge gifted the world 25 joyous years of PDF

phuzz Silver badge

Re: PDF can be cool... if you stay away from Adobe

Wait, wasn't it PoC||GTFO who produced a PDF, that also functioned as a valid NES ROM that would display the MD5 sum of itself?

Oh, yes it was:

Technical Note: This file, pocorgtfol4.pdf, is a polyglot valid as a Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) ROM cartridge, a PDF document, and a ZIP archive. We collided 9,824 MD5 block pairs to place the hash of this document on its front cover and the title screen of the NES game, but only 609 of them made it to the final release.

That's damn impressive.

(source)

Atari accuses El Reg of professional trolling and making stuff up. Welp, here's the interview tape for you to decide...

phuzz Silver badge
Gimp

Re: Oh how the might have fallen...

"How many on-board MIDI ports does your Amiga have?"

How many Atari owners used theirs?

Besides, it was only about £20-30 for a MIDI adaptor for the Amiga, which is inexpensive compared to the cost of the rest of kit you'll be wanting to hook up to it.

(This is why I don't get too partisan about Mac vs Windows vs Linux, none of them compare to the Amiga in my eyes)

NASA eggheads draw up blueprints for spotting, surviving asteroid hits

phuzz Silver badge

Re: 2 points here

"Because there are profits to be made spotting asteroids?"

Well, if you're into mining them, the ones that are already heading at the Earth will be easy to fly to (and hopefully re-direct).

That said, the only private entity I know of currently tracking asteroids is the B612 Foundation, but they're a non-profit just trying to keep us all safe.

Microsoft open-sources UI Recorder tool for Windows 10 developers

phuzz Silver badge
Facepalm

Re: For people who can’t be bothered building it themselves from the source.

Sure, just running a random executable is unsafe, but how many people can say that they read through the source of everything they've ever copied off github? Or did you just blindly make install that shit?

And that's without even getting into copy/paste hijacking.

Microsoft Edge bug odyssey shows why we can't have nice things

phuzz Silver badge
Gimp

Next time I see a comment saying something like "Microsoft saying they support open source is just part of their evil master plan!", I'm going to point at this:

"Microsoft's security team don't have visibility into Edge security issues"

MS is a massive organisation, and most of the time the left hand have no idea what the right hand is doing, and neither of them have even realised what the feet are up to.

This is why it's possible for the same company to be actively trying to crush all perceived competition, whilst at the same time (eg) contributing to the Linux kernel. It's not a nefarious plan, it's just different departments with no communication.

Microsoft CEO wades into ICE outcry: Cool it, we only do legacy mail

phuzz Silver badge

Re: Avoidance

"the UK's has been awash with asylum seekers who typically use this device to get into the country, fail their application [...] and just disappear."

In 2017 26,000 people applied for asylum, of those, the majority (14,000) were granted asylum. There's doesn't seem to be any hard statistics on what happens to people who's claims are denied, but in 2017 almost 27,000 people were detained, so it's unlikely all, or even most, people who fail to successfully claim asylum, manage to "just disappear".

(source and on an IT note, it seems the government provides it's figures in .ods format, rather than .xls. Who knew? Other source)

JURI's out, Euro copyright votes in: Whoa, did the EU just 'break the internet'?

phuzz Silver badge

Re: Hand Off My Internet

"The Internet and World Wide Web are [...] a decentralised, mesh based network,"

It might look that way from a distance, but when you look closer you'll see that generally internet connections are star shaped networks, with an ISP having all their customers connecting to them, and only a small number of routes out. Likewise, most links between cities and countries all come together in peering exchange points, and of course submarine cables tend to follow similar routes, and land at the same places.

For these words of mine to reach you, most of the way they'll be travelling over corporate owned networks and systems, only the last few meters are somewhat 'free'.

Who dares wins, they say, so Toshiba's SAS drive plans another hit on SATA

phuzz Silver badge

Re: Perfect for my home lab

We had a bunch of what were supposed to be (and looked like) genuine HP Gen8 caddies, but the drives we put in them were never detected. Which is odd because there doesn't seem to be much in the way of electronics in them. Complaining to the seller got a new batch which looked identical, but did work.

Shared, not stirred: GCHQ chief says Europe needs British spies

phuzz Silver badge

Re: Pooh to intelligence sharing

What's the betting that most of the hops used in British ale are either imported, or picked by immigrants?

A pretty and helpful user interface? Nahhh. Is that really you, Samsung?

phuzz Silver badge

Re: Let's not forget...

LineageOS already has triggers that you can set to turn on different profiles. Eg, when my phone connects to the wireless at work, it switches to the 'Work' profile which silences the ringer. I'm not sure if that's a default Android thing, or something Lineage have developed (often good ideas from the open source ROMs get integrated back into vanilla Android, just look at the quick settings dropdown)

Oracle: Think our DB sales are great now? Wait until we actually get the new product out...

phuzz Silver badge

Re: What does 'licensing support' mean

I assume it's the 'friendly name' for their license enforcement division.

Speaking of which, you read the article with both eyes, however your license only allows for single-eye reading, so Oracle are going to have to fine you. Oh, and once they fine you you still have to pay to upgrade your license for binocular reading.

Visa fingers 'very rare' data centre switch glitch for payment meltdown

phuzz Silver badge

Yes, but the important part was knowing exactly which component to switch off.

Capita admits it won't make money on botched NHS England contract

phuzz Silver badge

Re: Hmm

Who's to say that Crapita won't turn out to be designated 'too big to fail'? (I guess it depends how many ministers have cosy positions there lined up). We might end up paying even more for their losses.

National ID cards might not mean much when up against incompetence of the UK Home Office

phuzz Silver badge

Re: How would ID cards prevent anything?

"Introduction of an ID card would not have prevented the Windrush debacle, it would have forced it to happen sooner"

It might have happened sooner, but even if we had ID cards, under the current 'hostile environment' I could imagine the Home Office going back through old applications and revoking ID from people who got them through perceived 'loopholes'.

Fraudster admits she was OPM dealer: Leaked US govt staff files used to bag cash, car loans

phuzz Silver badge
Facepalm

Re: Take that!

"The U.S. actually doesn't impose inappropriate punishment in most cases"

From an American point of view that might be true, but for those of us outside the US, your sentences seem pretty draconian. The idea of jail being partly about reformation rather than punishment doesn't seem to have ever gained ground in the US.

Still, have to love the irony of calling yourselves the 'Land of the Free' with the largest prison population in the world :)

Yubico snatched my login token vulnerability to claim a $5k Google bug bounty, says bloke

phuzz Silver badge

Re: Donate

"They removed segregation from schools because it didn't benefit anyone."

Turns out sometimes kids learn better in single sex classrooms (but still within a mixed school). They tried it for some subjects at my brother's school and did see an increase in GCSE grades (and this was 20 years ago).

I still feel that schools as a whole should be mixed though, after all academic subjects are only part of what you learn at school.

phuzz Silver badge

From their reaction is sounds more like an honest fuck up, which is plausible, nay, expected, anywhere.

After all, if this was malicious, what exactly were they expecting to get out of it, a $5000 bounty? If they're that hard up for cash then they'll be bankrupt by next week.

More likely is a simple lack of communication between the person who read the bug report from the researchers, and the person who developed the PoC and though "we should probably tell google about this".

You should always remember Hanlon's razor.

PC nerds: Can't get no SATA-isfaction? Toshiba flaunts NVMe SSD action

phuzz Silver badge

Re: What do I need to specify on my next motherboard?

We've been using them in £200 Intel NUC machines (eg), so they're very much not an expensive enterprise product.

That's why I'm glad they're introducing a 120GB model, because for a small desktop you only really need about 30GB of space (120GB models are still only £25).

Strip Capita of defence IT contract unless things improve – Brit MPs

phuzz Silver badge

Re: 3% of GDP?

"without any clarity on funding"

There was clarity on the funding. The Prime Minister has said that the extra funding for the NHS will come from the money we'll be saving after brexit.

The widely agreed (including by the government itself) prediction that there will be less money after brexit has nothing to do with it, the PM was still very clear...

elReg, maybe it's time we had a 'magic money tree' icon?

What can you do when the pup of programming becomes the black dog of burnout? Dude, leave

phuzz Silver badge

Re: I don't recognise this. ...

"I view work as an exchange of services for money"

Exactly this.

I'll work overtime as long as I'm being paid. I'll be on-call if I'm getting paid.

What I won't do is work for free.

The other side of it is that working more than 40 hours a week is unproductive. (eg)

Brit mobile phone users want the Moon on a stick but then stay on same networks for aeons

phuzz Silver badge

"I think what most affects which network you go with depends on coverage in your local area."

Same here. The only network that covered my home was Vodafone (provided you stood by a window on the right side of the house), so I got a contract with them.

These days I live about 500m from a mast, so all the networks work equally well, but every time I've tried to leave Voda they've offered me an even better deal, and as yet they've not messed anything up bad enough to make me want to leave.

Developer’s code worked, but not in the right century

phuzz Silver badge

Re: timestamp is a date format

"l33ts use yyyyMMdd"

Also, Japan. It's also known as ISO 8601, and I use it for pretty much everything except talking to people.

Boffins offer to make speculative execution great again with Spectre-Meltdown CPU fix

phuzz Silver badge

Re: Hard as I try...

"It's already bad enough with uefi and "secure boot"."

UEFI is just a modern replacement for a BIOS, you might as well complain about SATA and PCIe.

Secure boot is just a method of checking that your bootloader has not been tampered with.

What's the problem?

Universal Credit has never delivered bang for buck, but now there's no turning back – watchdog

phuzz Silver badge

"its real aim was to get as many claimants off benefits as possible"

Well, with tens of thousands of people* dying as a result, I'd say they've achieved their aim.

* 45,000 between 2011 and 2014. Not a typo.

(Source, BMJ)

phuzz Silver badge
Meh

Re: uk.gov IT

"Do they know the people they're supposed to be helping?"

Of course they do, it's those poor, downtrodden rich people.

Did you know that (on the rare occasion they pay some tax), some of that money is just given to poor people? And it's not like these poor people have even bothered to be born to a well-off family, or be not-disabled. If people can't be bothered to help themselves, why should the government help them?

Sarcasm aside, the 'hostile environment' isn't just aimed at immigrants, it's designed to make life as uncomfortable as possible for people on benefits as well.

User spent 20 minutes trying to move mouse cursor, without success

phuzz Silver badge

Re: Keyboard ecosystems

"Basic keyboards [...] die in dishwashers"

Usually you can undo a bunch of screws and detach the electronics from the keys, then just wash the keys (and dry thoroughly).

BOFH: Got that syncing feeling, hm? I've looked at your computer and the Outlook isn't great

phuzz Silver badge

Lies and lying lyers.

It's always fun goading someone into a lie, and then running with it.

Ideally you should end up at the point where they have to admit to the lie in front of their boss. Oh, and keeping them guessing as to is your really know they're lying helps keep them on edge.

Salespeople are my usual marks.

The eyes have it: 'DeepFakes' bogus AI-meddled videos outed by unblinking gaze

phuzz Silver badge
Stop

Re: Back to the old ways?

"In a way, the arrival of deepfakes tech and its inevitable use as a propaganda tool"

Porn. It's mainly going to be used for porn.

(I could probably segue into some 'opiate of the masses' type point here, but that would be taking this whole subject too seriously).

Tech firms, come to Blighty! Everything is brill! Brexit schmexit, Galileo schmalileo

phuzz Silver badge

Re: Brexit Schmexit

The Labour party may or may not be likeable, but they really should have managed to capitalise on the sheer incompetence the tories have been displaying for the past year or so. When you're the opposition to a party with a leader who no one likes and who doesn't really want to be there, while the rest of her cabinet fight with each other, you'd expect the opposition to make a little more headway.

Microsoft loves Linux so much its R Open install script rm'd /bin/sh

phuzz Silver badge
Thumb Up

Re: Today's story...

"Replace cmd with powershell on your system and see how it runs."

There's an option in Win10 to do just this for the start menu. It works just fine.

(Powershell will execute valid cmd commands, plus all of it's own, so it's a drop-in replacement)

Solar winds will help ESA probe smell what Mercury's cookin'

phuzz Silver badge
Boffin

Re: I haz a disappoint

Throwing things into the sun is a lot harder than you might think. You have to counter out (most of) the Earth's orbital speed around the sun, which is 30km/s. As a comparison, a Falcon 9 has about 5km/s of delta V, but it needs 3km/s just to get off the Earth.

It's probably just within our reach as a species to send a small satellite into the sun, but it'll have to be a small satellite either using a very efficient propulsion method (ion drive?), or some clever gravity assists.

(eg Use a close flyby of Jupiter or Saturn to send your aphelion right out to the outer solar system, and then reduce your perihelion out there where the delta V requirements are low).

Microsoft reveals which Windows bugs it might decide not to fix

phuzz Silver badge

Re: Would it be at all possible to ........

It's not really fixing the problem, but buying an SSD (they're pretty cheap now) really helps make any OS (Windows/Linux/OSX etc) feel a lot more snappy, and open programs quicker.

Which? calls for compensation for users hit by Windows 10 woes

phuzz Silver badge
Gimp

Re: If it was only security patches

"I still don't know why they're doing 'forced updates' like that."

Because otherwise they get slated for everyone never installing patches and getting pwnd by every bit of malware that comes along.

Think back to the days when everyone ran Windows XP and most people/companies didn't patch, and Microsoft got their (deserved) reputation for having terrible security. That's what they're trying to avoid, by making sure everyone is running the latest security patches.

They've probably over-reacted, but at least now you know why.

Trump kept ZTE alive as ‘personal favour’ to Chinese president Xi

phuzz Silver badge
WTF?

Where's Bombastic Bob? He's usually all over any thread that mentions the 't' word.

Surely there's some sympathetic reason that trump has done this that us filthy libtards aren't getting?

In fact, it's probably because our feeble minds can't keep up with the greatness that is trump. I'm sure he's actually getting the best deal ('the BEST') from China, right?

That's right isn't it Bob?

Bob?

Devuan ships second stable cut of its systemd-free Linux

phuzz Silver badge

Re: systemd-free?

"what exactly is the difference between Debian with sysvinit installed, and Devuan?"

Ideological purity.

Oh, and the vi vs emacs holy war was getting old so a new point of conflict was needed.

Tech rookie put decimal point in wrong place, cost insurer zillions

phuzz Silver badge

Ghost in the Shell:SAC uses the exact same plot device as Superman 3 (stealing the rounding errors). Clearly the writers assumed most viewers would never have seen Superman 3.

Have to use SMB 1.0? Windows 10 April 2018 Update says NO

phuzz Silver badge

Re: So for a while now...

To be fair, since Vista (when Microsoft changed the way drivers were allowed to interact with the kernel), the only BSoD's I've seen have been either bad hardware, or bad drivers/software.

I've still probably seen more BSoDs than kernel panics, but that's partly because most of the linux machines I interact with are servers, with the higher grade of hardware that implies.