* Posts by Will Godfrey

5893 publicly visible posts • joined 8 Sep 2007

Take the bus... to get some new cables: Raspberry Pi 4s are a bit picky about USB-Cs

Will Godfrey Silver badge
Facepalm

Let me see if I've got this right

It is a Universal Serial Bus

We have 3 different partially compatible versions, and 5 different incompatible standard plug types - along with a handful of quite incompatible propietary versions.

Will Godfrey Silver badge
Facepalm

Re: Does this mark the transition to...

Thanks for the reminder about ARM chips that apparently draw no power, but crash when all address and data lines are at zero.

Malicious code ousted from PureScript's npm installer – but who put it there in the first place?

Will Godfrey Silver badge
Angel

Re: No software can be trusted

I trust the code I write myself...

{mostly}

Industry reps told the UK taxman everything wrong with extending IR35. What happened next will astound you

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Unhappy

Surprised?

Not in the least.

Successive governments have a very long record of totally ignoring any comments they don't like.

Literally rings our bell: Scottish eggheads snap quantum entanglement for the first time

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Angel

Re: Scotch eggheads???

Eh? You call very nationality 'it' - how rude!

Usenet file-swapping was acceptable in the '80s – but not so much now: Pirate pair sent down for 66 months

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Thumb Up

Still use it

A handful of techie groups. Traffic is generally quite low, but remarkably free of crap.

We have the best trade wars: US investigating French tech tax plan over fears it unfairly targets American biz

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Re: Would it really make a difference to their budget

The amount is comparatively unimportant. It's the principle of telling the bully it can't dictate to, and cheat on the rest of the world that matters most.

I don't have to save my work, it's in The Cloud. But Microsoft really must fix this files issue

Will Godfrey Silver badge

Silly question! Of course he was.

Will Godfrey Silver badge
Unhappy

Where will it end?

This is the problem when you dumb down things - people stop thinking, and seem to eventually lose the ability to think.

Train maker's coder goes loco, choo-choo-chooses to flee to China with top-secret code – allegedly

Will Godfrey Silver badge
Happy

The reason they know such detail

The Chinese felt sorry for the US so returned the documents with the errors corrected.

Oh no, Twitter's gone down. How can we get the word out? Ah yeah, that's right. We have a website that works

Will Godfrey Silver badge
Linux

Presumably...

This was only a problem to the twits.

Facebook devs devise Hermes to push cross-platform JavaScript to godlike speeds

Will Godfrey Silver badge
Unhappy

No Thanks

I don't really want to make a horribly insecure language (if you can call it that) enable miscreants to screw up my system faster.

Oh good. This'll go well. Amazon's Alexa will offer NHS advice

Will Godfrey Silver badge
Mushroom

How Big?

The brown paper envelopes, that is.

I can't imagine any rational person thinking this is a good idea - but then if the envelope is big enough many people become quite irrational.

Bloodhound gang rides again: That's the Super Sonic Car bods, not the bawdy novelty pop act

Will Godfrey Silver badge
Boffin

Re: Now the 'Think of the Children' icon makes sense!

This is one car designed to run a limited number of times, as efficiently as possible, that will test materials and techniques to the limit (hopefully not beyond), providing a huge amount of information.

Compared to:

Millions of barely maintained cars, each covering much greater distance on a daily basis. That does provide information of course - a progressively more accurate account of how crap most drivers are.

Internet imbeciles, aka British ISP lobbyists, backtrack on dubbing Mozilla a villain for DNS-over-HTTPS support

Will Godfrey Silver badge
Happy

Streisand effect

Nice of them to tell as many people as possible about this.

Huawei website ████ ██████ security flaws ██████ customer info and biz operations at risk: ███████ patched

Will Godfrey Silver badge
Meh

E for Effort

Could do better.

I can understand them wanting to keep the details under wraps for now, but they could have allowed a bit more info I think, and maybe a date when full details would be released. They shouldn't need to be whiter-than-white (compared with everyone else), but that's the reality of their current situation.

Microsoft middlemen rebel against removal of free software licences

Will Godfrey Silver badge
Meh

Slightly conflicted

But only slightly.

I have a sliver of sympathy for the resellers, but at the same time they were quite happy to sell overpriced tat to their victims customers.

I don't know but it's been said, Amphenol plugs are made with lead

Will Godfrey Silver badge
Unhappy

Re: keeping swappable spares in stock might make sense

The most fearsome phase on the packaging is:

"XXXnn Compatible Replacement"

White House mulls just banning strong end-to-end crypto. Plus: More bad stuff in infosec land

Will Godfrey Silver badge
FAIL

Usual Story

No matter what they say, such a move would have no effect at all on any real baddies, but would put everyone one else at serious risk.

As a comparison, in the UK guns are very tightly controlled and licensed, yet still the crims seem to get them, and in central London (the most watched city in the UK - and possibly the world) there has been an increase in gun crime, including multiple murders.

P.S. I'm not advocating letting everyone have guns, just pointing out that prohibitions don't work.

Scumbags can program vulnerable MedTronic insulin pumps over the air to murder diabetics – insecure kit recalled

Will Godfrey Silver badge
Mushroom

It's locking the door after the horse has bolted

but hacking life support devices (with intent) should be a distinct criminal offence with a mandatory life sentence - assuming you can catch the slimeballs

Could an AI android live forever? What, like your other IT devices?

Will Godfrey Silver badge
WTF?

The one thing I never got my head round is how I managed to lose a sledge hammer in a house move. They are not exactly small and insignificant things.

That this AI can simulate universes in 30ms is not the scary part. It's that its creators don't know why it works so well

Will Godfrey Silver badge
Alien

Be afraid

Be very afraid.

America's latest 5G drama: Spectrum row bursts into the open with special adviser fingered as agent provocateur

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Facepalm

Re: 5G Use

.. and don't fade into mush when it rains.

The dread sound of the squeaking caster in the humming data centre

Will Godfrey Silver badge
Happy

Re: Stan, Sid, let's make it simple, okay ?

Yep.

And I also remember 'Henry' in Wireless World circa 1965

BOFH: What's Near Field Implementation? Oh, you'll see. Turn left here

Will Godfrey Silver badge
Pint

Been a long day

Bug hunting (but got the bugger), and BOFH makes a delightful moment of relaxation to go with this ->

Drone fliers are either 'clueless, careless or criminal' says air traffic gros fromage

Will Godfrey Silver badge
Meh

Said to get a reaction

That's how it looks to me, and it certainly succeeded in that!

Whether it was the reaction he wanted is another matter of course.

Mike Lynch in court: I was not aware of every single thing Autonomy did around the world (so don't blame me)

Will Godfrey Silver badge
Coat

Makes a change from rogue software developers.

There's Huawei too many vulns in Chinese giant's firmware: Bug hunters slam pisspoor code

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FAIL

Worse than useless

What is the point of examining ancient firmware of just one company?

Now if they did some real research they would examine the work of a range of similar products from different manufacturers, comparing their initial quality, current quality and most importantly, code development trends.

However, if they did that they probably would annoy their paymaster.

Eggheads have found a positive link between the number of racist tweets and the number of racist hate crimes in US cities

Will Godfrey Silver badge
Unhappy

Re: But let's not forget...

Yes. Exceptionally dense solid ones.

Stop us if you've heard this one: US government staff wildly oblivious to basic computer, info security safeguards

Will Godfrey Silver badge
Linux

Shirley Knot

I thought these people were supposed to be highly trained professionals - the only ones employed by 'gifted ones' (tm) who know everything and are much superior to the rest of us.

How will I ever cope with the disappointment?

/s {if needed}

BGP super-blunder: How Verizon today sparked a 'cascading catastrophic failure' that knackered Cloudflare, Amazon, etc

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Thumb Up

Re: Response

Ecellent!

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FAIL

Response

Verizon "take out customer's safety very seriously"

and "Lessons will be learned"

Also "Measures have been taken to ensure this cannot happen again"

Yeah. Right. Oh, and I have some magic beans and a flying pig you might be interested in.

The seven deadly sins of the 2010s: No, not pride, sloth, etc. The seven UI 'dark patterns' that trick you into buying stuff

Will Godfrey Silver badge
Pint

Re: A Prime example

Have one of these as well as an upvote

Funny you mentioning that one. I seem to be the only one in my family recognising this scam :(

Having bank problems? I feel bad for you son: I've got 25 million problems, but a bulk upload ain't one

Will Godfrey Silver badge
Facepalm

Re: I call bullshit

Well, if you think that's bullshit how about this then.

In the middle 1960s the Prudential Assurance Company's entire data processing system was transferred from punched cards to an IBM360. A single machine with no backup facilities, and it remained like that for about 6 months.

And the reason for no backup? Not in that year's budget!

I have no qualms about mentioning it, because the person overseeing the transfer (very much under protest) was my dad - who is long since beyond any kind of retribution.

Will Godfrey Silver badge
Coat

Jealous now.

I've made some interesting screw-ups over the years, but never had the opportunity for a truly great one like this.

Iran is doing to our networks what it did to our spy drone, claims Uncle Sam: Now they're bombing our hard drives

Will Godfrey Silver badge
WTF?

That's Rich!

what about Stuxnet then?

Remember the Nominet £100m dot-uk windfall it claims doesn't exist? Well, it's already begun

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Thumb Down

I'm shocked

I would never have thought that such honourable organisations would behave in this way.

/s

There's that phrase again: JP Morgan CIO told Autonomy's first HP boss it was 'a shit show'

Will Godfrey Silver badge
FAIL

What a train wreck

And that's both companies! I've been in some poor situations, but nothing remotely like this. It must be absolute hell for those workers at the bottom of the heap.

UK.gov must sort out its crap data and legacy IT, warns spending watchdog

Will Godfrey Silver badge
Facepalm

Did someone say 'Crapita'?

Oh! Sorry it was Crap Data.... same thing really.

Good old British 'fair play' is the answer to vexed Huawei question, claims security minister

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Happy

Re: Fair play?

We used to sing "Land of dopey Tories".

The choir master was not amused.

Will Godfrey Silver badge
FAIL

A question (or two)

Does he actually believe what he's saying himself?

Does he think anyone else will?

Does he care?

OK, so that's three

Must watch: GE's smart light bulb reset process is a masterpiece... of modern techno-insanity

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Thumb Up

Exactly. That was my very first though

PowerPoint to start telling you that your presentation is bad and you should feel bad

Will Godfrey Silver badge
Happy

Re: Spice it up a bit

Especially if it's a talk about English Pubs, such as the Cock Inn.

I'm thinking of the one in Ide Hill village actually. Traditional Pub, lovely atmosphere right by the village green.

Will Godfrey Silver badge
Stop

As I was told

The purely verbal lecture started with this:

"Even very smart people can't effectively listen and read at the same time.

Most people have difficulty with either."

Azure flock can stop faffing over bastion hosts: Microsoft has made it noob-friendly

Will Godfrey Silver badge
Facepalm

Re: Bastion. . . ???

Doh!

I should have got that one - I was actually there more recently than at Leeds. In my defense it was still about 20 years ago.

Will Godfrey Silver badge

Re: Bastion. . . ???

Looks rather like Leeds Castle in Kent to me - although I admit it's been a long time since I visited it.

Ahhhhh! What year is it?! Users left without direction or clue after Google Calendar 404s

Will Godfrey Silver badge
Unhappy

Maybe I'm mistaken

... but it seems that these days Google screws up almost everything it touches.

Brit hosting provider tsoHost takes needleful of 'unauthorized code' to the servers, suffers week of outages

Will Godfrey Silver badge

Indeed, and for some reason when I see that name, I seem to read. TossHost

Parliament IT bods' fail sees server's naked OS exposed to world+dog

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Hmmm, not sure I'll still be here in 30 years time!

This isn't Boeing to end well: Plane maker to scrap some physical cert tests, use computer simulations instead

Will Godfrey Silver badge
WTF?

Really?

You couldn't make it up, could you?

With a major investigation concerning software still very much under way, they come out with such an insane idea. The really, really scary bit is there's a good chance they'll get away with it!