* Posts by Will Godfrey

5893 publicly visible posts • joined 8 Sep 2007

UK's Guardian newspaper breaks news of ransomware attack on itself

Will Godfrey Silver badge
Unhappy

Bar-Stewards

Fortunately it looks like The Guardian crew are a bit better organised than many others. Still an expensive nuisance though. I'll wait till the dust settles, then make a donation. We need unaffiliated reporting.

Swatting suspects charged with subverting Ring doorbell cams and calling cops

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Facepalm

I'm trying to be surprised by this.

... but failing miserably. It was 100% predictable that sooner-or-later someone would do this. The kit is almost designed to fail.

Hmmm. Did I say "designed".

Microsoft reports macOS Gatekeeper has an 'Achilles' heel

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Unhappy

I detect a trend here

Microsoft seems very cough public spirited cough in pointing out everyone else's bugs.

British Airways flights grounded due to glitch in flight planning app

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Maybe they used the wrong cable

I don't know what this fiber thing is supposed to do that Aer Lingus used, but thought you used a fibre one for comms links.

Latest US blacklist spells trouble for China’s biggest domestic 3D NAND supplier

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Black Helicopters

O really?

So here we have the worlds youngest civilisation (for some undefined value of 'civilised') thinking it will just walk over the worlds oldest one.

Could get 'interesting'.

Salesforce's new hires are less productive, says CEO Benioff

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Facepalm

Sounding rather like a micro-manager

See title.

When we asked how you crashed the system we wanted an explanation not a demonstration

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Happy

Re: A simple solution

Is that on a black computer with a black screen that flashes up a message in black?

In praise of MIDI, tech's hidden gift to humanity

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Boffin

Re: works mostly...

These days, the trick is to use something like a 4 port MIDI->USB adapter. That way, your 4 sources instead of taking it in turn, get through together.

Server broke because it was invisibly designed to break

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Elfin Safety

... nearly closed down a factory with a safety barrier they insisted on. This was on a machine that that took in sheets of printed thin card, 'pastry' cut them into small opened out pill packets, then folded them and glued them - it was an absolute work of art. The numpty decided that the moving machinery was too dangerous for the operators to adjust all the tiny hooks and levers that did the folding while the machine was running.

There was a slight problem with this, fine adjustments had to be made at speed to take into account things like air flow. The machine also must never be started with packets already in it. Nor must it be stopped while the glue line is running. I'm sure you can see where this is going! Medical supplies companies are extremely fussy about delivery times, so after the loss of a major company, the business decided to move the trouble maker to another unit that had 'greater' need of him.

P.S. It was also controlled by a cough PLC with plug-in I/O modules the size of a large book. For a while I had a regular job replacing driver transistors :)

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Re: Shoulda got a ....

That one is an absolute classic

You can hook your MIDI keyboard up to a website with Firefox 108

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Unhappy

It's become a single program to do everything

Very badly...

Where's my honorary Unix badge?

Qualcomm talks up RISC-V, roasts 'legacy architecture' amid war with Arm

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Facepalm

Wow! Talk about sour grapes

This sounds more like a 10yo being caught nicking an extra scoop of ice cream!

Arm processor technology caught up in US chip war with China

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Pint

At Last!

... a commentard with at least 2 communicating neurons.

Most sensible thing I've seen on here for some time. Have one of these ->

Twitter dismantles its Trust and Safety Council moments before meeting

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Unhappy

Re: "Fair" story about Musk? Ha!

I'm afraid we're swimming against the tide. I won't give up on El Reg... yet, but the clock is ticking.

Brit chip company picks RISC-V for next-gen microcontrollers

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Facepalm

Not Again!

Is there ANY topic that is safe from being turned into a political rant!

This never used to happen before El Reg got taken over by the Left-Ponders.

Will Godfrey Silver badge

Re: a CEO who seems to have actual technical knowledge

Well, you may be right, but that seems to be less common with a technically minded boss. XMOS have been around for quite a while now, so there's hope.

Microsoft to buy 4% of London Stock Exchange in 10-year platform deal

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Facepalm

Well, Well.

Something else being sold off. I wonder who will really pocket the proceeds this time.

Inadequate IT partly to blame for NHS doctors losing 13.5 million working hours

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Unhappy

Re: The Blame List

I've yet to find any kind of executive who has the remotest idea about software, or system design.

San Francisco investigates Hotel Twitter, Musk might pack up and leave

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Big Brother

Just had a thought

With Musk's increasing instability I wonder if the gubbermint might take action to secure SpaceX on national security grounds.

Fresh version of Xfce, the oldest Linux desktop of them all, revealed in Xubuntu builds

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Re: Use it here too

Yes Ourobrox. I did some development on it in the early days adding a few extra bits of RISC-OS behavior. Sadly, much later (when I wasn't looking) someone removed it saying it didn't behave like 'proper' window managers. I think the entire project is dead now :(

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Use it here too

I have that installed on everything down to a Raspberry PI. However, on my 'main' 'pooter it's as a backup - I prefer the Openbox/ROX Filer combo. (quite RISC-OS like).

Asus' latest single-board computer packs a 12-core, 4.5Ghz Intel i7

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Unhappy

Re: In English, please...

FFS, come on - this was a British publication...

FTFY

Will Godfrey Silver badge
Meh

Would prefer something in the middle

Say 2-3GHz, with some sensibly arranged I/O sockets fitted, and at a price where you don't have to sell all your toys.

Boss installed software from behind the Iron Curtain, techies ended up Putin things back together

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Happy

Hmmm

A suspicious amount of beer-ding going on here.

Equinix to cut costs by cranking up the heat in its datacenters

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Boffin

Run the whole site at mains voltage DC

While HVDC has issues, they are manageable.

All modern PSUs will run off 240 V DC, and will actually do so more efficiently, so no changes needed in the racks (unless they are using AC fans). The UPS(es) can also be of a type that has a 240V battery stack - they do exist. I've worked on them. Apart from charge balancing circuitry they are actually much simpler than conventional ones, and again more efficient.

The initial cost would be greater, but would be quickly offset by improved performance.

P.S. In the ones I saw, there was no power wasting inverter. Also, the AC mains input to the UPS was harmonically 3rd tuned to flatten the waveform and give the rectifiers an easier time.

Victims of IT scandal in UK postal service will get fresh compensation

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Mushroom

Been covered by the above commentards

But still makes me bloody angry.

KmsdBot botnet is down after operator sends typo in command

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Black Helicopters

Coudn't happen to 'nicer' peole

BWAAAAAA ha ha HA

Rights groups threaten legal action over NHS data pilot based on Palantir tech

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Mushroom

No Surprise

Successive governments have sold of just about anything of value, so the barons are now scratching around for anything else they can make money out of. The NHS has been a prime target in various ways for some time. The only thing that's different is that these days thay hardly bother to make any effort to disguise the fact.

Programming error created billion-dollar mistake that made the coder ... a hero?

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Re: Worst code I ever saw...

Used sparingly, even the occasional "Here be dragons" is useful - it alerts the reader to the fact the function is both complicated and temperamental!

(interrupt handlers anyone!)

'Russian missiles can't destroy the cloud': Ukraine leader describes emergency migration

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Why Now?

They apparently started to put this together nearly a year ago, and it seems it's been pretty complete for a long time. I'm guessing that AWS has already been under attack from Russian supported crims, so there's no point in keeping quiet about it now.

Elon Musk picks fight with Apple for slashing advertising spend on Twitter

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Re: YAMM - yet another Muskamania Mutter

Please don't use the term "Spawn". Even toads will feel insulted.

Fresh versions of Ubuntu Touch, Mir display server, and Unity arrive

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Re: Not coming here

I'm well aware of the issues with SystemD, which I why I migrated all my machines to devuan.

I've no particular concerns about snap itself, more the way ubuntu is quietly installing it on otherwise normal upgrades, and transferring things like browsers across to snap packages. The average user would know nothing about this, and have no idea what to do if they were aware of it happening.

As has been said before this is a security risk. You have no control over exactly what is being installed. You can't inspect it or change the contents.

Removing snap (if you know how to do it) presents further problems in that ubuntu no longer offers some packages other than as snaps, and the average user is not going to know how to add other repositories (or even that they exist), and certainly would have no hope of compiling stuff. Come to think of it I wouldn't like to try compiling firefox!

Will Godfrey Silver badge
Unhappy

Not coming here

As far as I'm concerned, since the introduction and forcing of snap, anything connected with ubuntu is "Here Be Dragons" country.

Sandworm gang launches Monster ransomware attacks on Ukraine

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Re: Illegal attack

It does seem an odd phrase. I can't think of any kind of attack that can be considered legal. Even if it was in some way provoked, it's still a wrong thing. Similarly I can't see that defense against an attack could be illegal.

Man wins court case against employer that fired him for not liking boozy, forced 'fun' culture

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Ugh!

I consider myself fortunate in never having come across that sort of company, although I know they exist.

US chip war could hurt the West as Beijing moves to ramp up its own industry

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Facepalm

Surprised?

Pretty much what some of us have been saying for some considerable time.

Epson zaps lasers into oblivion, in the name of the environment

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Linux

Follow the money

I bought a colour laserjet about 5 years ago. I've used it for colour posters and flyers as well as ordinary letters. It still has the original cartridges.

Linus Torvalds to be 'more hard-nosed' as Linux 6.2 merge window meets Christmas

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Thumb Up

Good to see

Firm but fair, and with a sense of humour - the best sort of boss

Singapore branches out onto internet of trees

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Coat

Fascinating

In fact quite a tree-mend-us setup.

OK, OK, don't push.

Doctors call for greater scrutiny of bidders for platform that pools UK's health info

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Unhappy

Two week old fish

That's what this smells like.

Study suggests AI cruise control could kill traffic jams by cutting out the 'intuition' factor

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Happy

I try to drive far enough from the car in front that when they brake, I can just coast and use up some of my 'buffer'. Sometimes the driver behind will get impatient and zip round me as soon as there's a gap in lane 3 but they don't get very far ahead, but the again there are times when a whole line of us end up at a nice steady pace. Zero stress, and significantly boosts your MPG.

Someone has to say it: Voice assistants are not doing it for big tech

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Re: Blind person's perspective

Thank you for that. I know one or two blind people, one of who works entirely by braille - she's damn fast and accurate!

I also knew a guy with a severe speech impediment (gone now sadly) so this would have been useless for him too.

European Parliament Putin things back together after cyber attack

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Happy

Re: a sophisticated cyberattack

Well it smelled a bit, so maybe it was ping-pong

AI giant Baidu shrugs off US chip export restrictions as having 'little impact'

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Meh

No Surprise

Did no-one in American officialdom notice that intelligent people have an ability to work round problems?

Waiting for speedy broadband? UK's Openreach prioritizing existing work over fiber expansion

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Unhappy

Re: Costing to fix the copper

As has been mentioned before American is not actually 'International', but in fact a minority dialect.

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Facepalm

Re: They had a nifty machine ..

And me.

We don't need another American tech mag. There are already several of them.

JWST snaps first chemical profile of an exoplanet atmosphere

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Thumb Up

Great stuff

JWST really is the gift that keeps on giving!

Locked out of Horizon Europe, UK commits half a billion to post-Brexit research

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Re: Dollars? Euros? News?

I can remember in the 1960s it averaged 2 dollars to the pound.

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Re: Yeah but....

You were being nice to him then.

Chinese Loongson chips coming in 2023, on par with 2020 x86 kit

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Meh

Worth watching - as usual

Equivalent to a few years old now, but how quickly will they build on that?

America is doing an excellent job of pushing China to become not only fully independent, but also a serious competitor.