* Posts by gnasher729

2110 publicly visible posts • joined 13 Oct 2014

Dave's not here, man. But this mind-blowingly huge server just, like, arrived

gnasher729 Silver badge

Re: So, he was just fired ?

I cannot see that at all. An uncle giving a nephew a chance to stop whatever he was doing and do an honest job instead, that’s highly commendable. It’s not as if the nephew was taking anyone’s job away. And then, companies hire people, and sometimes these people are idiots, including idiots committing idiotic crimes.

The weak-minded nephew is gone, most likely for some jail time because the uncles protection would have instantly ended, the receiver was a drugs dealer and not some corporate spy, so little harm done. The owner of the other company will most likely feel sorry for the uncle.

gnasher729 Silver badge

Re: What happened to the server?

If it was my company, and you had my server, clearly stolen, you might not want to return it to me, but when the police knocks on your door, what are you going to do? I mean seriously?

gnasher729 Silver badge

Re: And there's me thinking...

“ High value server IT gear isn't the easiest thing to flog off and transform into cash.”

Especially if the owner of the gear knows who you are and where you are and can get unlimited numbers of police to your place.

Air Canada must pay damages after chatbot lies to grieving passenger about discount

gnasher729 Silver badge

Re: Air Canada must really be terrible

"I can't believe they took this case to court instead of just paying the $1000 or so difference, esp. considering their pathetic justification that the chatbot was its own entity. What idiots."

The people asking for money fall into three categories: Idiots who are just trying it on, people you damaged and that you legally have to compensate, and people that you damaged but for some reason you don't have to compensate them. Appearing in small claims court sorts out the first category. And that is important, because if you pay them, there will be more and more appearing. The other two categories, you just pay because that is cheaper than a defense with a real lawyer, and it's the right thing to do. You might actually turn them back into happy customers.

gnasher729 Silver badge

Re: re: corporate policy

On the other hand, if that legally worthless sign keeps drivers away from your truck at a reasonable distance, and avoids damages, that's money and annoyance saved for everyone,

gnasher729 Silver badge

Re: And if that position was legally defensible

I think in your example there would be no legally binding contract formed. But if I took a taxi to the airport to get my first one-dollar flight and get turned down, they might very well be liable for the cost of the taxi both ways.

But not if I tried it again, because I now would know there is no contract.

gnasher729 Silver badge

The bot is not human. It has zero responsibility. But the airline has 100% responsibility for what happens on its website, including chatbots.

With a human it would be exactly the same. The airline is 100% responsible. Meaning they have to give the refund. Except they could sue their (probably ex) employee if he gave out wrong information intentionally.

Apple makes it official: No Home Screen web apps in European Union

gnasher729 Silver badge

Re: Thanks Apple...

“ Could they not use Safari for PWAs and allow other browsers for normal surfing? Granted, this may not be seen by all as full compliance, but at least PWAs would still be working. I'm sure the courts would OK this if Apple committed to allowing PWA support in third party browsers at a later date.”

You said it yourself. The EU would not see it as full complying with the court ruling. Because it isn’t. Now what you say - it would be better for users if Apple didn’t comply with court ruling and made this things work with Safari only - that is likely true. But much too dangerous for apple.

Angry mob trashes and sets fire to Waymo self-driving car

gnasher729 Silver badge

Re: Curious?

In the UK 2021, 5.2 traffic deaths per billion mules driven. So a million miles without fatalities is just what you would expect; a single death would be either very, very bad luck or very, very unsafe cars.

You need 200 million miles before we can start talking. With a million miles only, we can only say “not 200 times worse than human driven cars”.

Meta says risk of account theft after phone number recycling isn't its problem to solve

gnasher729 Silver badge

I thought about this. My mobile is 07xxx yyyyyy. Reasonably short. There are hundreds of millions of those but not infinitely many. And since all my mates have that number I want to keep it.

My suggestion: Add three more digits, so my “real” number is 07xxx yyyyyy 001. The phone system has an automatic translation so calling my number adds 001. Whoever uses it for 2FA enquires the last digit and never changes it, so for 2FA they use 07xxx yyyyyy 001.

If I give up my number and it is reassigned, the last digits change to 002. So for 2FA the number is never reused. Facebook would have a number that just doesn’t work anymore. 2Fa wouldn’t message the new owner.

And you can have a number with 100 to 999 added. They are _never_ reused. They would be less popular because they are harder to type and remember. But a company can get many of them with different purpose.

Old systems would not need changing but would remain insecure. Clever phone software would remember the complete number but not display it, and they would be able to find that a number is reassigned.

gnasher729 Silver badge

Re: Well if Meta are going to get roasted for this one

About the “changed email provider”. I just left BT. I have to keep paying them £7.50 a month for my email (up to 10 email addresses of which I use three, but changing them would be such an absolute pain).

Apple would give me free email as long as I have an Apple ID. But I can’t get my name without a number (like johnsmith123). Vodaphone is nice enough to let me keep my landline number for free for incoming calls; all my wife’s mates use it; and you _can_ use it for outgoing calls but it costs. Like if you forgot your mobile at a mates house.

Tesla's Cybertruck may not be so stainless after all

gnasher729 Silver badge

Re: Stainless?

Well, lifeless means you are dead. Stainless shouldn’t develop stains. What about my stainless steal cutlery that goes in the dishwasher all the time?

Fake LastPass lookalike made it into Apple App Store

gnasher729 Silver badge

Re: Confusing developer name on the Apple store

Changing your name on the AppStore is a bit of a pain. Basically every developer has an identity. Three years ago you bought “LastPass by xyz”. So apple allows you to download newer versions of “LastPass by xyz”. “LastPass by abc” would be a different app. It couldn’t access data created by “LastPass by xyz”. It couldn’t communicate with “other app by xyz”. So a bit painful and hard to test.

gnasher729 Silver badge

“Even more evidence that the walled garden doesn't so anything but let Apple assert control”

The app was removed, so obviously you are wrong.

gnasher729 Silver badge

Does the app get removed from users devices? (I would hope so. I wouldn’t want to keep it).

Do customers get money back, and what happens to. Apple’s thirty percent? (If I remember right apple returns the purchase cost, doesn’t pay the developer but insists on getting their payment).

Sorry, scammers: The FCC says AI robocalls are definitely illegal

gnasher729 Silver badge

So what about non-AI robocalls? Are they supposed to be legsl or not? What about yhe f***ers who call you and hang up? Why not a law that if a company calls me, there must be a living human on the line, and they are not allowed to hang up until I allow it?

You're not imagining things – USB memory sticks are getting worse

gnasher729 Silver badge

Quad level is slow. I have a two TB quad level SSD drive, and it goes down to 60MB per sec.

HOWEVER it can write to the same cells as one-bit cells at 1100 MB/sec. So you can write 500GB at full speed to an empty drive. If you copy more, you go down to 60MB/sec. If you stop copying, it copies from 1 bit to 4 big cells in the background. That’s 3.6GB per minute. So after one minute without writing you can write 3.6GB at full 1100MB/sec speed. Right now, that drive has 800 GB filled, 1200GB 4bit cells or 300GB 1 Bit cells unused so I can write 300GB at full speed.

Note that today tri-level SSDs are a lot cheaper, so there is much less price advantage. But I compared it to a 2TB spinning drive, which isn’t much cheaper, which is a lot slower, and a lot heavier - that 2TB SSD is just 45 Grams.

US starts 'emergency' checks on cryptocurrency power use, citing winter power demands

gnasher729 Silver badge

Re: Here we go again...

How does it make a difference? It’s the amount of energy.

gnasher729 Silver badge

Re: Pay as you go

About the kettle: It takes the same energy to boil a Liter of water at 3kW or 1kW, but 1kW takes three times longer. As a result, I’ll boil 0.3 Liters for my 0.2 Liter cup of tea, and not a whole Liter and wait forever. 70% energy saved.

gnasher729 Silver badge

Re: Pay as you go

Every bit of energy use damages the environment. Since we don’t want people to freeze to death, they are allowed to use energy to keep their homes warm. There is zero reason why they should be allowed to use electricity for crypto, whether they pay the rates or not.

Techie climbed a mountain only be told not to touch the kit on top

gnasher729 Silver badge

Re: Had a similar thing happen

At one place we had a one page document describing how to set up a machine from scratch. Starting with a freshly purchased computer. The document was stored on some drive and printed.

Instructions started with “follow these instructions precisely. If something doesn’t work, 1. Ask for help. 2. Write down exactly what you were told to do. 3. Do it. 4. Do NOT leave out step 2.” And at the end it is your job to update the document so it reflects reality again.

gnasher729 Silver badge

Re: I once had ....

“We weren't allowed to reboot the ancient machine serving as a print server for the labs only laser printer”

There was a story from an electricity company moving offices. Since they were the electricity company, they didn’t bother paying themselves for electricity, so they had no meters, and all computers were turned on permanently.

Then they found out the hard way what happens if you have a spinning hard drive that had been spinning for three years 24/7: The lubrication oil changes. It’s fine as long as it spins, but if you stop the drive it turns hard. And when you turn the computer on again it doesn’t spin. Major disaster.

They found out that if you drop one of these hard drives but not from too high to avoid damage, then the oil becomes fluid for some very short time because of the impact shock. So you turn the computer off, one person drops it from a few inch, and another turns the power on _just_ at the right moment.

gnasher729 Silver badge

Re: What percentage?

Reading about the five seconds…

A nightmare bug in a graphics device driver happened if you turned the machine off, then back on between 35 and 45 seconds later. I figured out eventually that the graphics card held memory for 30 seconds, after 50 second it was cleared and that worked. In between memory was in a bad state.

Then I figured out with a 13 month old driver version. But not with a 6 month old one. And after a long week (no debugging possible without a working graphics driver, just code inspection) it turned out our top developer needed to write proper manly code. An if statement

If (ptr != 0)

Is for wimps. So he changed it to how real men do it:

If (! ptr)

Which unfortunately does exactly the opposite and as a manly developer, he was so smart he didn’t need code reviews.

The FCC wants to criminalize AI robocall spam

gnasher729 Silver badge

Re: Some months ago I was downvoted

They are not nudes of Taylor Swift. They are nudes of an unknown woman with a picture of Taylor Swift’s head added. Anyone who is turned on by that is frankly a saddo who needs their head examined.

gnasher729 Silver badge

Why not outlaw human spam? Because a human can spam one person at a time only. An AI can spam thousands at a time.

Fujitsu finance chief says sorry for IT giant's role in Post Office Horizon scandal

gnasher729 Silver badge

No. The system provided numbers that didn’t add up. From that the only logical conclusion that you can draw is that at least one number is wrong. You don’t know which one.

Then the numbers were consistently changed so that (a) they added up and (b) they showed that the postmaster was at fault.

Analogy: There are two speeding cameras side by side. One shows I’m going 30, the other shows I’m going 60. Obviously one camera is wrong. If you took this to a judge he wouldn’t know whether to laugh or cry. To avoid embarrassment, the police changes the “30” to “60”. That’s what Fujitsu did

gnasher729 Silver badge

Here’s what happened: Fujitsu created software that was unreliable. In some situations information from a post office was recorded incorrectly. That can happen, but I think it would be a good interview question for a software developer how to fix the situation; how to detect that something is wrong and fix it. It’s not particularly difficult. So this was incompetence.

But that is the start. Fujitsu not only created unreliable software, but they knew about it, kept it a secret and didn’t fix it. Having bugs within the basic functionality of the software is incompetence. Knowing about it and not fixing it, that is malicious.

But then things got worse. So far the outcome was that they got numbers that didn’t match up. When that happens you should go and try to get the real numbers. That’s not what they did. Instead they went into postmasters’ computers (which they swore they couldn’t) and changed the numbers to make it look like the postmaster was a thief. That’s now going from malicious to criminal.

Web devs fear Apple's iOS shakeup for Europe will be a nightmare for support

gnasher729 Silver badge

Go to a website with an outdated certificate on iOS, and it is really hard for a user to go to that site. Which is good. Of course the user needs to use some common sense to figure that ordering stuff and paying money to a site with outdated certificates is a bad idea, while watching cat videos is more harmless.

FBI confirms it issued remote kill command to blow out Volt Typhoon's botnet

gnasher729 Silver badge

Re: Thanks for nothing

“ the safest device is one that is switched off and stays off”

True. I have one brand new broadband router that is unsafe, and two older routers that are totally safe. They’ll go on eBay when I have the time.

ICANN proposes creating .INTERNAL domain to do the same job as 192.168.x.x

gnasher729 Silver badge

.internal works nice if you have say 100 stores store-.internal, store2.internal and so on. .lan or .local would be bad because they are not local or on the LAN.

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

gnasher729 Silver badge

Re: A purely theoretical curriculum

“ I thought the rest of my comment indicated that I meant "a theoretical curriculum in computer science as an undergraduate". Theology can do whatever it wants, as it usually does anyway.”

And now, for the hell of it, we create a big fire.

gnasher729 Silver badge

Your mistake is confusing “science” with “useful and should be required for any software job”. Security is clearly in the second category, but mostly not in the first.

We put salt in our tea so you don't have to

gnasher729 Silver badge

Re: Pointless if potless

If it was actually British it won’t heat very well with 120 Volt only.

US judge rejects spyware slinger NSO's attempt to bin Apple lawsuit

gnasher729 Silver badge

Re: Interesting argument from Apple

Yes. The fact that a determined organisation can hack into an iPhone doesn’t make it a flaw.

Apple's on-device gen AI for the iPhone should surprise no-one. The way it does it might

gnasher729 Silver badge

Re: While I'm very skeptical of the AI hype compared to the reality

You better tell Apple that, in case they didn’t think of that. But I didn’t realise that you needed to _write_ multiple gigabytes for every use.

Macy's and Sunglass Hut sued for $10M over face-recog arrest and 'sexual assault'

gnasher729 Silver badge

Problem with facial recognition

The problem is: This facial recognition software will have access to millions of photos. Including old photos. And among millions of photos there will inevitably be someone who looks exactly like the culprit. Or someone who five years ago looked exactly like the culprit looks today. And since they found someone looking exactly like the culprit, the witness will also identify them.

But with millions of photos checked, it’s inevitable that there is a match by pure coincidence. So the match on its own doesn’t mean much.

I guess someone is asking this facial recognition system for the best match. It would be very easy to ask for the 50 best matches and then check whether several of them look very similar. And if you figure out that the three or nineteen best matches all look very similar then we know there is little reason to suspect any of them.

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

gnasher729 Silver badge

They actually do tell you. The macOS license allows you to run macOS only on an Apple-branded computer. Plus there is a 64 bit code built into the hardware that is required to run MacOS, and copying that makes it a DMCA violation.

gnasher729 Silver badge

Because Apple doesn’t sell you a license. And it explicitly says that you must run macOS only on an apple branded product. Which includes VMs running on Apple labelled products.

gnasher729 Silver badge

An additional down vote for the avocado toast. There is zero commission for buying physical goods.

gnasher729 Silver badge

Re: It isn't Microsoft not "allowing" users to run on bare metal

At one company where I worked, we had a Windows site license, and all the sales people wanted a MacBook with windows. If they were good sales people they got it.

Users now keep cellphones for 40+ months and it's hurting the secondhand market

gnasher729 Silver badge

Re: No need for an 'upgrade'

No. Google has made promises, but no Google phone has received an update after 7 years yet.

gnasher729 Silver badge

Re: No real surprise

If your phone contract makes you pick a new phone every two years then you might consider changing your contract. That phone every two years isn’t free, you pay for it full price.

The Post Office systems scandal demands a critical response

gnasher729 Silver badge

Re: It's still happening

Everyone in any job makes mistakes. Someone puts up wallpaper, they will make mistakes. Some get fixed, some are not very visible, and some the customer complains. The difference being a software developer, every mistake will be found. In this project, every mistake is multiplied by ten thousands of post masters, using the software every day for 20 years.

So there will be mistakes. It is unavoidable. Where management failed was what they did about it. In this case, mistakes were just not fixed. Full fault with management.

US Supreme Court doesn't want to hear Apple, Epic's gripes about in-app purchases

gnasher729 Silver badge

Against the spirit?

Absolutely not. Epic demanded 10 items. One was the right to have a link to their own payment site, another not to pay commission on sales done that way, and eight more.

The judge gave them one (link to payment site must be allowed) and denied everything else. So the spirit of the decision is that apple can charge.

And the first commenter here said how easy it would be for companies to just lie about sales and not pay up. That makes it obvious then that apple can take precautions like the right to perform audits. Companies that buy hundred licenses for some software are used to the fact they can be audited to make sure they don’t use 200 copies. Exactly the same situation.

Apple claims top spot in global smartphone market for first time

gnasher729 Silver badge

Non-smartphones

When the first iPhone was released, I remember it had quite a high market share in “smart phones” but that was only a tiny percentage of the phone market. I wonder what percentage of the total phone market smartphones are today.

Asahi Linux team issues promising update on efforts to conquer Apple Silicon

gnasher729 Silver badge

Re: Meanwhile at Apple...

And then: “Linux on Macs? More sales!”

Disease X fever infects Davos: WEF to plan response to whatever big pandemic is next

gnasher729 Silver badge

Re: > If you do not trust Guardian, check any health authority or known hospital web-site

Masks don’t need to stop a virus. Masks need to, and do, stop water droplets that the virus travels on. If they don’t stop them, they slow them done so they can’t travel far. This rubbish about “doesn’t stop a virus” is totally irrelevant.

While we fire the boss, can you lock him out of the network?

gnasher729 Silver badge

Re: Effective Decredentialization Before Firing

A company I worked for laid off people to the day two years after I started. We knew about the layoffs but not who, and I didn’t realise the two years since starting.

The day of the layoffs, my keycard didn’t let me in. Went to the admin building (open to the public) and they told me for security reasons all keycards stopped working after two years, and they already had my new card ready.

gnasher729 Silver badge

Re: Working for Untrustworthy Companies

Not sending in the employee’s taxes is in most countries treated as theft. It is serious trouble. It’s not like your salary: Your salary is legally the company’s money until they pay you and it becomes yours. But your PAYE is _your_ money which the employer should send to the tax office. So not sending it is stealing from you.

Arm cooking up powerful Cortex-X CPU to beat iPhone performance, says industry watcher

gnasher729 Silver badge

Re: M

Some other things are massive caches (192+128K L1, 12MB L2 per four cores, plus Shared memory cache between processor), shared memory between CPUs and GPUs, massive out of order capacity, up to nine instructions per cycle). Just brute force.