* Posts by Wayland

897 publicly visible posts • joined 19 Feb 2016

Decade-old bug in Linux world's sudo can be abused by any logged-in user to gain root privileges

Wayland

Re: How is this possible?

I think he is implying that we should use something like Rust instead of C and C++. C is great because you can do what you want. The problem is you can do a lot that you never intended. Pointers, C's greatest strength really are a problem waiting to happen.

It ought to be possible to write in a language that disallows buffer overflow yet compiles down to code that's just as efficient as C. Nothing wrong with a bug free program compiled from C, if you can achieve that.

The hour grows late, the enemy are at the gates... but could Intel's exiled heir apparent ride to the rescue?

Wayland

Re: Intel's new CEO check list

Different budgets and different technologies. Yes the web hosting would cost a lot less if they needed a less powerful server but it's a difficult enough task to get a complex website built without ruling out technologies that the designers are familiar with.

Wordpress is hugely popular but it annoys me that it takes 500ms to switch to the next page. Throwing computer power at it makes no difference beyond a point. Re-write the thing on more of a static basis and it would be very fast and require much cheaper hosting. But then it would not be Wordpress.

Wayland

Re: Intel's new CEO check list

The rebranding ones are easy. It pisses everyone off when they remove a pin just to make a chip incompatible. I think Intel do have knowledge of ARM.

Intel are also pretty good at OpenCL, OpenGL, Vulkan and DirectX. All the i-core CPUs do these.

FPGA and ARM could be added to the PC. Maybe in the GPU. Yes they do need a GPU.

Wayland

Intel Tidy Your Room

Intel is a company that mostly works well. What they are able to do whilst stuck on 14nm is amazing. They get far more out of their silicon than AMD.

How do you fix the problems without breaking things that work in such an established company?

They have a huge fan base so to speak. They should keep their fabs but be a bit flexible in using other contract fabs. I can see a massive problem when both AMD and Intel are trying to get TSMC to make their chips. They need to do a deal with another fab to get some talent in to sort out their process.

Engineering is supposedly based on science but I believe the engineers go beyond what the scientists are able to theorise. This is done by trying things and seeing what works. There is more to be discovered about light waves which will shrink designs further. I suspect TSMC have stumbled on this and Intel have not. When the scientists catch up with the engineers then expect amazing advancements.

Wayland

Re: Really Small, Really Economic

A PI can do all those things but should not be used for them except where a PC can't do them better. Compiling for example requires as much performance as you can get unless the particular job can be compiled in one minute on the PI.

Wayland

Re: Atoms are now nice SoCs to build little servers...

The less powerful chips should be tagged as efficient and the more power hungry tagged as high performance. People purchase based on the features most important to them. Atom CPUs are an excellent idea as long as they can do well at what they are used for. A product gets a bad name if it can't do well what people were expecting.

Two clichés, one headline: 'No good deed goes unpunished' and 'It's always DNS'

Wayland

Power failure fixed

I was working on our company's WISP gear in a cabinet at the bottom of a transmission mast when the power went out. Our UPS worked perfectly keeping our subscribers online, except they had no Internet. The company we bought the Internet through, their UPS had failed.

Wanting to get everyone back online again I opened their cabinet and ran a power cable from our cabinet to theirs and powered them up. Everyone came back online. I phoned the other company to let them know the situation. Their engineer turned up in a right rage and said I was the one who had caused the power cut. Clearly not me as the surrounding properties were without power. They threatened to sue me for putting their service off line when in fact I had got it back online.

What's that you got there, AMD? More Ryzen chips? Yeah, OK, we could do with some of those

Wayland

Consider Ali Express Xeon mother boards

At one time Ali Express Xeon motherboard bundles offered good price performance but with each RYZEN release this became less so. Both the RYZEN and the Xeon perform thanks to plenty of cores and threads but with some games it's all down to clock speed. Enough clock speed will always compensate for fewer cores but the converse is not true. However the newer games based on Vulkan actually do make use of more cores. A 2GHz Xeon can compete with a 4GHz RYZEN if it's a modern title. Although always get the highest clock speed you can get.

It's a similar story with the RAM. 4 sticks of RAM in a Xeon works like the two faster sticks of RAM in a RYZEN.

It is time again to consider an Ali Express Xeon bundle if you can't build a RYZEN system. A motherboard bundle with a 6 core 12 thread Xeon with 8GB RAM is £50. This is about the same Cinebench performance as if you build a RYZEN 3 system for £150, assuming you can get the CPU.

Wayland

RX 480 4GB cards on ebay for £110. Former mining cards from China I expect. They perform pretty well. They will do as a place holder until your preferred card is available.

Some of the coins are designed to be difficult to mine on ASIC devices. They achieve this by designing a very large memory requirement, hence 4GB mining cards becoming obsolete for mining.

Why make games for Linux if they don't sell? Because the nerds are just grateful to get something that works

Wayland

Re: SteamOS

You're out of date and misleading. All graphics cards work on Linux (Mint specifically). You may not have the fancy controls but they are all GPUs rather than basic VGA. You generally don't have to install anything unless you want to make sure you have the OpenCL compute stuff.

The major factors stopping games on Linux are the DRM and Anit-cheat features naturally.

Yes SteamOS is dead but that's understandable, it was half arsed. It's also not that important for PC gaming. The idea was to provide a console like experience. This has been achieved with GamerOS which is basically Steam in BigPicture mode with no desktop or LibreOffice. It really does turn a PC into a console and is what SteamOS was pretending to be. I'm still not sure if this is a good idea though.

I've been building Windows 10 based gaming machines because people want to play Fortnite. Other than DRM and Anti-cheat games Steam has you covered on Linux. Let's see how Cyberpunk 2077 gets in Linux, seems about the same as Windows so far.

Wayland

Re: SteamOS

Linux Mint has overtaken Windows 10 for ease of use. Only a few hold out programs can't run on Linux. Many people's perception is 15 years out of date since Linux has been better than Windows for at least 5 years.

Wayland

Re: SteamOS

Steam on Linux works best for me with a VEGA 56 GPU. I'm using a R9 390 8GB card at the moment and the game Grip is not happy where as it was with the VEGA.

Wayland

Re: SteamOS

"you can install Steam for Linux on Ubuntu or even Fedora but it is a load of faffing" - false.

It's easy. Go to the steam website, click the button that says install steam on Linux. Almost no difference to Windows install and nothing a Linux user would find tricky.

No drivers, no tweaking, no config files, no command line, it works easily and well.

Wayland

Re: I'm flabbergasted!

Linux gamers tend to do other things with their computers and play games as well. Building a dedicated games machine you would use the OS that plays the games that you want. Windows is a good choice if you can handle problems such as updates spoiling your setup.

The curse of knowing a bit about IT: 'Could you just...?' and 'No I haven't changed anything'

Wayland

Re: Ah yeah Windows XP....

Windows XP was the pinnacle of MS Windows. Obviously modern drivers and modern APIs are missing but only because support stopped. Windows 7 was a worthy replacement but not as good. Windows 10 has just got worse at every update to the point where unless it's essential for essential programs then switch to Linux.

Wayland

Re: Sorting other people's stuff

Laptops always sell if they can browse the web and run Office.

Desktops need to be converted to gaming machines.

8GB RAM

4 core CPU

1GB GPU such as HD 5870 or better

I'm looking into GamerOS which runs on an i5 using integrated graphics. Many games play very well. You can sell them a decent GPU once they're hooked.

Wayland

Re: Sorting other people's stuff

I've been building budget gaming computers. These are very fast after I build them. However when they come back for an upgrade the user has installed their own bloatwear. One came back with so much cruft that it could not even accept the password without missing keystrokes.

Nice and fast again after I formatted with the latest Windows 10 and run CTT Debloat. yeah I know, I should install Linux but it won't play Fortnite if I do that and that's all that matters.

Wayland

Re: Better state of mind for everybody: I do not touch other's computers

Just upgrade them to Linux. It's only Windows experts who have a problem with Linux, ordinary people just think it's Windows XP.

Wayland

Re: Printers attached to PC's

Samsung made some pretty good printers and now HP owns that business. I will say that HP have since 'improved' the Samsung models to the point where I would where I would not recommend them.

Wayland
Angel

Re: Printers attached to PC's

"(relatives ask for IT assistance, they likely end up running Linux)"

Exactly right!

'Massive game-changer for UK altnet industry': BT-owned UK comms backbone Openreach hikes prices on FTTP-linked leased line circuits

Wayland

Re: Hyperoptic

I expect they have even more incentive to find alternatives.

Wayland

Re: The obvious solution...

Wireless Broadband companies rent antenna space on farmer's barns in return for free Internet. There are lots of companies with Fibre, they just have to battle BT and BT's governmental bribes. This is actually a good thing, it will rally the forces opposed to BT and create better services from the competition.

Wayland

Re: This smells.

Entirely predictable for the last 17 years. That's why any altnet company has already made great progress in ditching BT.

Wayland

You must be very lazy. If you live on an island then put up a dish to connect to another dish on the mainland. Then have your island Access Point beam it out to the homes. I expect that's already been done and you are even lazier and have not even been to their website to order the service. You're also not very observant since the antennas will be on people's chimneys.

Wayland

Re: What a wanker.

Not only did BT fail to deliver on rural broadband they actively blocked their competition. If people need to have a broadband connection they will suffer 500k if they have no choice. With no competition BT still make the same money as if it was 2meg. Same with industrial estates. Those businesses will generally pay only a little more than people in a housing estate but many fewer customers in the same sized area.

Wayland

Re: This is exactly WHY...

5 BT execs were offended by your post. You are spot on. After inventing ADSL BT held back Broadband in the UK at every possible opportunity. I've not forgotten how they corrupted Broadband NOW! who were set up by the government to stimulate private groups to roll out their own WiFi and Fibre based rural broadband. Yes we now have villages like Great Maplestead Essex with 50meg with 500meg fibre being rolled out now. This village is listed 3rd in the Daily Mail's slowest broadband at 0.42meg based on BT numbers.

No thanks to BT who corrupted Broadband NOW! by obtaining inside info and claiming to be installing ADSL in every village which sought the grant.

The company to watch is CountyBroadband.net who are delivering 500meg symmetrical fibre service to rural areas. They abandoned BT years ago.

AWS reveals it broke itself by exceeding OS thread limits, sysadmins weren’t familiar with some workarounds

Wayland

We may not love The Cloud but we worship the man in the sky behind the cloud.

Wayland

Re: Plan One

Throw better hardware at the problem is a sensible quick fix. However tuning the software is probably what's needed. The National Grid has similar problems with balancing it's load. Excellent in theory but seems to have a mind of it's own at the large scale.

How Apple's M1 uses high-bandwidth memory to run like the clappers

Wayland

Yes fitting 16GB in the same device makes it fast and is probably enough. However for tasks benefiting from more RAM then perhaps DDR could be used as virtual memory. That way you can fit as much as you need even though your CPU is stuck with 16GB.

Wayland

Re: Apple leading the way once more

If the SoC is socketed then a RAM upgrade could be like upgrading the CPU. Virtual Memory has been around for decades so if the external DDR was presented as a RAM drive then it could be used as super fast swap space. A slight change in the architecture but the OS won't notice.

Wayland

Re: So now Apple had made it's entire RAM space shared

If we compare running a task on a CPU to a GPU we see that the CPU has all sorts of fancy rings and layers protecting different processes to each other. Where as a GPU is just raw power in a parallel format.

I'm not sure how sophisticated an ARM is these days but it would need all those fancy x86 things in order to replace it on the desktop and in the server.

Wayland

Re: So what is the neural engine for?

Developers who use software or GPU based neural processing can take advantage of hardware based version. This converting software to hardware has been going on since the first microprocessor. Today's buzzwords A.I and Machine Learning are fancy terms for a bruit force way of problem solving, hardware helps a lot.

Wayland

It's actually a very justified reason for integrating the memory in the same device. I'll have some HBM with my CPU.

What I'd like to see from AMD is HBM in their CPUs with DDR used as virtual memory in some way. I'm pretty sure if you've got 16GB in the chip that will handle most things but with external DDR you won't run out.

Wayland

Re: Mac pro

I love it when people do those type of upgrades.

Wayland

Malcolm, yes the chiplets, infinity fabric, HMB are common to TSMC and AMD. Also interesting is that NVidia not only designed their own ARM chip but now own ARM holdings. What have Intel got?

BBC makes switch to AWS, serverless for new website architecture, observers grumble about the HTML

Wayland

Re: "Instead, the BBC team devised a new architecture based on serverless computing."

Amazon will be part of the UK government soon.

2020 hasn't been all bad – a new Raspberry Pi Compute Module is here

Wayland

Re: Forgotten memories

An NVMe slot would provide removable storage and speed.

Excel Hell: It's not just blame for pandemic pandemonium being spread between the sheets

Wayland

Re: Relax...

I used a tool called Monarch. This took printed (text saved to a file) reports from old mainframe type systems and turned them back into tables for import into a database. You had to create a template over the report to tell it which bits where page headings and table headings and actual tabular data. 20 years ago we use it to put purchase orders from a 1980's minicomputer onto a web portal.

Xen Project officially ports its hypervisor to Raspberry Pi 4

Wayland

Re: Cool points for the developers

The SD card is a big problem, those things are horrible. OK as a floppy drive but terrible as a hard drive. I think Xen on ARM is the goal here for the server market but Xen on PI is very cool. If you want performance then Docker or LXC containers is the way to virtualize. It's just that it's easier for the user if they get a whole virtual PI rather than have to use a container.

Wayland

Re: Beautiful Madness

I was provided a dual Pentium II 233MHz machine with 256MB RAM and 10GB Hard drive on Windows NT4 which at the time was the most powerful machine the corporation could provide.

This brought the compile time for a CD ROM based manual down from 14 hours to 3 hours.

I then found the bit of code which was making it slow which made it do the job in 10 minutes!

A PI linked to a decent storage drive would definitely run that compile. However I don't think it would work well to an SD card.

England's COVID-tracking app finally goes live after 6 months of work – including backpedal on how to handle data

Wayland

I expect if the police get possession of the phone then they will have the tools to see all your contacts and locations. They can then go and harass those people.

Even if they have no such ability, possessing the phone means they will tell the suspect that they can and are just awaiting their nerd to have a look.

Also how much of this new addition to the OS is running when the app is not installed? I suspect that Apple and Google made the important part of the app and all NHSX did was hook the API into something that writes files.

Wayland

Re: data use policy

Obviously the anonimised IDs must be de-anonimised for someone once a trace is required.

Also is the data pulled from phones or pushed? If there is no central authority is this some kind of self governing bot farm?

That long-awaited, super-hyped Apple launch: Watches, iPads... and one more thing. Oh, actually that's it

Wayland

I stopped wearing a watch 25 years ago when I got a mobile. It's interesting they are trying so hard to get us to wear one again.

Wayland

Re: Norfolk (the English county)

I used to live in Chumsfud Essex.

Who cares what Apple's about to announce? It owes us a macOS x86 virtual appliance for non-Mac computers

Wayland

I'm more of a rebel than a commie when it comes to Open Source v Microsoft or Apple. Where Richard Stallman would not run anything he did not compile from source I am happy to run anything that's useful and good value.

I have switched to Linux over a period of many years and now only run Windows for specific tasks where either Windows is better or I've not found a Linux solution.

If I wanted to move off a Mac then I would first switch my software to programs that could be run on Linux. Then whilst keeping my Mac I would switch my daily work to the Linux machine. I would try VNC or something to access the Mac from my main PC.

Virtualisation would obviously be the penultimate step before ditching the Mac. If it can run on a Hackingtosh then it ought to run as a VM. Someone just needs to put in the work to make a virtual Hackingtosh possible.

Wayland

Re: IBM seems to have done very well over the years

The IBM 360 has been running for centuries in computing years and not been replaced by an ARM chip. Yes if you're on IBM 360 then perhaps you are at risk of IBM doing something to hurt your business but generally they just charge loads of money and you can continue to use the machine the way you always use it. Apple on the other hand want to drag their users where Apple wants to go.

Salon told to change ad looking for 'happy' stylist because it 'discriminated against unhappy people'

Wayland

discriminatory

I thought the purpose of selecting someone for a job was to be discriminatory. There must be some things you can ask for in an applicant and some you can't.

As the applicant if you turn up and you dislike the grumpy boss do you still have to take the job?

Wayland

Re: I'm with Richard

Stating that it's a good morning could be triggering to those who are depressed or suicidal.

Surprise! Voting app maker roasted by computer boffins for poor security now begs US courts to limit flaw finding

Wayland

Re: 'Cause spys respect EULAs, right?

Better to have real criminals find and exploit the bugs than white hats who simply warn you and don't tell the criminals. Which one provides the most motivation? Clearly when your system is under heavy attack by criminals you are more inclined to fix bugs.

Anyone else noticed that the top countries for broadband speeds are well-known tax havens? No? Just us then?

Wayland

Re: no mention of IPv6?

This sounds like a failure of IPv6. If it's so good then why can't you run your country on IPv6 and have a gateway to IPv4? Unless a technology is so much better than the existing technology it will get nowhere if you have to throw away a good thing to buy a much more expensive slightly better thing.

The automobile was always much better than a horse and carriage.

The electric car has some advantages and disadvantages. The only way that will win is with an attack on the internal combustion engine such as the unavailability of petrol.

Make it so I can access IPv4 from IPv6 then it will probably start being used.