* Posts by Brewster's Angle Grinder

3265 publicly visible posts • joined 23 May 2011

Airline software super-bug: Flight loads miscalculated because women using 'Miss' were treated as children

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Call me _Doctor_ Grinder.

I wanted to rant about that, too. It's bad enough that they are deducing a person's age and gender from a part of their name. But, even worse, they are rewriting someone's name to fit their assumptions. Sorry our software won't let women be called Jack - it'll assign a male weight to you - so we'll have to call you Jackie.

And what do the hell do they do about gender neutral honorifics? ("Yes, I did gain my first PhD age 13...")

Privacy activist Max Schrems claims Google Advertising ID on Android is unlawful, files complaint in France

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Re: That's what you get when software has to cost nothing

"If no real money can be made almost everybody is not interested."

It's not that people aren't interested. But they have to pay the bills.

Imagine your data center backup generator kicks in during power outage ... and catches fire. Well, it happened

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Re: Lots of places gets as cold as Texas ...

"With electric cars, we'll have a huge-ish battery to plug into our homes, no?"

I was about to suggest something similar. Everybody gets to work and plugs in their cars to charge on the understanding that, if there is a power cut, they supply the juice. (You just have to hope the power is restored long before you need to get home...)

Hospitals will always have staff on shift so will always have a supply of backup batteries. (You can imagine calling in staff early because there's a power cut and they need the batteries...)

If you can't log into Azure, Teams or Xbox Live right now: Microsoft cloud services in worldwide outage

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Joke

Re: Don't use DNS

Every site I want to visit is at 192.168.0.1

State of Maine orders review of $54.6m Workday project as it alleges delivery failure and threatens cancellation

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Fail once and, okay, it's probably the supplier. Fail twice, and you have to start to look at what the customer is doing wrong.

What happens when back-flipping futuristic robot technology meets capitalism? Yeah, it’s warehouse work

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That the frog is still alive doesn't mean it won't eventually boil...

Yeah, the idea that lost jobs will always be replaced is the economic equivalent of Moore's law. It would break down were we to reach a point where we had robots who could do any task we assigned them.

It seems unlikely we will get there. For a while. But machines are moving up the value chain and are becoming more and more capable of doing sophisticated tasks. Every ten high value jobs are being replaced by one or two high skilled ones and a lot of low skilled, low value jobs. That's why productivity is dire. That's why twenty and thirty year olds are, overall, worse off than their parents were at a similar age.

Maybe it's a blip and we'll figure out a way. Clearly, part of the problem is that money is being hoarded. But I'm sceptical that the jobs will inevitably appear due to some unseen force of economics.

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Re: exactly the sort of thing we want machines to do.

If every warehouse worker made redundant by a robot is needed as a repairer then there is no cost saving; you now have the same number of employees on the payroll (but as skilled staff rather than unskilled labour) and you have the robots.

Facebook's new hookup: A pair of submarine cables to link North America, Indonesia, Singapore

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A pedant would say it's "laying". But we could infer what was meant (it seemed unlikely they were manufacturing the cable.)

I guess it's by analogy with "building a pipeline". But pipelines are assembled from short lengths of pipe so the "line" is built, whereas a single submarine cable can be a couple of thousand kilometres long and will be unspooled and "laid" (actually buried) as a single piece. [SOURCE]

Scottish National Party members found among list of names signed up to rival Alba Party after website whoopsie

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Fortuitous...

But it does put a lot of pressure on the named SNP members. Either they go back to the colleagues and claim "curiosity" while swearing blind they are loyal (and serve their time under a cloud of suspicion), or they jump ship.

Everything points to a routine cock up. But it's one that might push waverers to jump.

Bad news for automakers: That fire at the Renesas chip plant was worse than expected

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Re: This is why...

When did pork-barrel politics ever make sense?

Blockchain may be the machinery of mischief, but it can't help telling the truth

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"Couldn't Christies, and any other trusted name in the art world, just sign NFTs with a secret key, which could be verified by anyone with their public key?"

But let's suppose Christies' security isn't up to much (they're an art house), and somebody hacks them and steals their private key. Aren't you now screwed? Somebody can stream signatures, and any certificate that says "I own X" becomes worthless.

The blockchain doesn't have that problem.

Rogue elements: Hades and Loop Hero manage to draw on the same legacy while having very little in common

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Trollface

A pedant writes...

Not an issue. This game doesn't ask you to go to hell. It asks you to go to the [Greek] underworld - the kingdom of Hades. Y'know, out in the Styx.

That's a completely different plane to Satan's abode.

SK Hynix boss predicts CPUs and RAM will merge, chipmakers will hold hands to make it happen

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Trollface

Re: HBM?

You mean if you need lots of memory we might have to sell you a rare, super-expensive CPU? I fail to see the downside here! The only snag is convincing buyers to accept it.

We definitely need a "K-ching!" icon

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Re: Ultimately, speed will increase further in Computing in Memory(CIM)

x86 only loads 64 bytes of data at once ("cache line"). So if your array is bigger than that, the linked list approach would probably work. (But that data has got to be 64-byte aligned.)

With modern CPUs, complicated algorithms that cram data into 64 bytes often perform better than algorithms which eat fewer cycles. Obviously YMMV

Free Software Foundation urged to free itself of Richard Stallman by hundreds of developers and techies

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Leaving asides the rights and wrongs of RMS, it does worry me that people can now be indelibly stained. Get sentenced to 3 years in pokey, and ten years later the records are expunged. You are clean. But a tweet from a decade ago never becomes "spent", even if you delete it and apologise.

More recent examples: a prospective parliamentary candidate in Hartlepool; and the editor of Teen Vogue (both had apologised and the latter said the idiot things when she was an idiot teen.) It took a helluva lot of support to get James Gunn reinstated. This lack of due progress and inability for society to forgive is not healthy. People are being excluded for acts speech and acts that are lawful.

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Thumb Up

You know what's great about El Reg? It's one of the places on the net where this kind of debate is allowed to rage.

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Re: Let this be a warning to all decent people

I believe the modern term is TERF.

Google patches WebView component to end unexpected Android crash fest

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Re: WebView, a system component linked to Chrome

The key word being "also". The system webview and Chrome are separate apps. I don't think Chrome uses the system web view, although they are built from the same source, which is why Google are advising you upgrade that as well.

Remember Apple's disastrous butterfly keyboards? These lawsuits against the iGiant just formed a super class action

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Re: Peanuts

Per my analogy: Your kitchen's burnt down? Oh well, here's another dryer with the same fault. This new one's not caught fire yet. If it does, we'll replace that, too.

These are not faulty parts. It's alleged to be a faulty design. Now I'm open to the idea that punters "knew" what they were getting and on that basis have to suck it up. But if the keyboard is found not to be fit for purpose, then Apple should have to rework the models to have a better keyboard or provide equivalent (or better) spec replacements.

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Re: Peanuts

It shouldn't be compensation. If they are found guilty, they should be forced to rectify the faulty devices - or replace them. Cf. Whirlpool tumble dryer recall.

Thousands of taxpayers' personal details potentially exposed online through councils' debt-chasing texts

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Assuming all human beings are spherical and of equal volume

"It is more than time for a flat tax and flat benefit system, fair, simple and cheaper..."

Simple? Undoubtedly. Cheaper? Have you met Capita? Fair? Only if you adopt the most infantile definition of "fair".

This is especially clear in the benefit system. You either pay out an extortionate sum that guarantees anyone can meet their needs. Or some people's needs aren't met without top ups. Human beings are complicated and end up with tangled lives, and it makes sense to pay based on need - with the aim being everyone has a decent minimum standard of living. You don't even have to look down at the individuals; housing costs aren't consistent across the country so want to pay the housing component of the benefit based on local prices.

The argument is a bit more nuanced for the tax system. But clearly, there's no point taking money off low paid people just to give it back to them with benefits. So straight away we have to have an exception. And if you want tax to raise revenue, then the rates end up ruinously high or the rich have to pay higher rates. (There's a discussion to be had about the purposes of taxes, here. But if you beleived in MMR, you wouldn't be arguing for flat taxes - because taxes are there to damp down inflation and the rich are the people who you want to take it off.)

And all that's before we start using the tax system to discourage bad behaviour (sin taxes) and encourage good behaviour.

Trail of Bits security peeps emit tool to weaponize Python's insecure pickle files to hopefully now get everyone's attention

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Joke

Re: pwned by default

"Probably not a super situation for files distributed to/by world+dog."

Don't be a pessimist. Word had autorun macros for years (and so did CDs and USB drives) and none of that ever caused a problem. Who's going to be interested in a few high value researchers and their carefully curated hoard of personal data?

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A fly in an ice cube in a microwave.

I can't think of a use case where I'd want to serialize and deserialize live code.

When I persist data, it's deserialized and validated, and then the objects are reconstructed - not because I'm worried about being pwned, but because I want to know I'm in a known good state with all my invariants intact. ("Have you tried turning it off and turning it on again?")

Okay, maybe I'm a bit sloppy at times and a certain pragmatism creeps in. But the intent is there (and there are always "fixme" comments in the code...)

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pwned by default

"You need to ensure that pickled files are encrypted or something."

I'm not a python user, but it sounds like the problem isn't lack of encryption. The problem seems to be the format can contain automatically executed code; they're doing the equivalent of a javascript programmer parsing a JSON file with eval().

There's even a hint they might be using these hooks, when all they are doing is transferring data.

Someone defeated the anti-crypto-coin-mining protection for Nvidia's 'gamers only' RTX 3060 ... It was Nvidia

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Unhappy

Re: We Just Can't Have Nice Things

I've lost track of how many years I've been waiting for that. And in the mean time, I've regretted not investing - think how much I could have made.

Google halves Android app fee to 15% for lower-earning devs... who aren't responsible for majority of revenue anyway

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It's Epic that have driven this. And we owe them thanks for that.

But would the rates be even lower if there was fair competition? Have we just been bought off? If we were free to use Epic payments, would that been 10%, 7%, or even less?

Following Supreme Court ruling, Uber UK recognizes drivers as workers, offers min wage, holiday pay, pension

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Re: Devil in the detail

"I'm sorry, but you can't log on to the platform at the moment as we already have 1.000000001 drivers waiting in our virtual taxi rank. Thanks for choosing to drive for Uber. We value your car. Please try again later.

☐ click here to be notified when a space in the virtual taxi rank becomes available."

Millimetre-sized masses: Physics boffins measure smallest known gravitational field (so far)

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A cleverer version of this argument would be to say, "In what way is a tensor boson comparable to a vector boson? (And why do we exclude scalar bosons?) "

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Re: General relativity

I'd hold on for a quantum theory of gravity before making that assertion.

For now, we view a force as a process which causes a change in momentum of an object. There are four such fundamental processes,* exchange of photons (electromagnetism), exchange of gluons (Strong nuclear force), exchange of W and Z boson (Weak nuclear force), and gravity. Yes, we model gravity as geometry. But there are well known problems with that model (dark energy, dark matter, closed time-like curves, black holes). If spacetime really does exist, it is probably stepped, not curved. And since the end outcome is probably the exchange of gravitons, we may not even need spacetime at all; we could exist in a sea of gravitons and distance be the measure of the mean number of gravitons between us.

We can also model electromagnetism and geometry and merge it with general relativity, but we don't trend to talk about electromagnetism as consequence of curved spacetime.

* Debate, should we include the Higgs as a fifth force?

Google emits data-leaking proof-of-concept Spectre exploit for Intel CPUs to really get everyone's attention

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"Google needs to target the people paying web developers..."

Who'll say they can't afford to splash out on these things or that, if they did, the customers wouldn't pay the price. (Where the price to consumer may well be "free".)

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Re: Tried all exploits, none worked. Yawn.

While Linux may have better mitigation, it's more likely down to the difference in processor. AMD chips, for example, are more resistant.

This developer created the fake programming language MOVA to catch out naughty recruiters, résumé padders

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Black Helicopters

Re: I can't believe it's not real!

Penzias and Wilson thought the microwave background radiation might be RFC1149 comms. They had to evict the carriers.

Huge if true: If you show people articles saying that Firefox is faster than Chrome, they'll believe it

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Re: Major media

But under the hood it's Safari; it's just a skin.

UK draft legislation enshrines the right to repair in law – but don't expect your mobile to suddenly be any easier to fix

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Forget the parts. A welcome start would be to insist phones/Macs have a decade of software upgrades.

Memo to scientists. Looking for intelligent life? Have you tried checking for worlds with a lot of industrial pollution?

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Re: "`Oumuamua, the first-known foreign interstellar object to visit the Solar System"

Of course, you can't rule it out being artificial 100%. But the overwhelming balance of probabilities is it was natural.

If it was launched deliberately, then it was launched at a time when there only a few monkeys (or a few dinosaurs). And why would you send a probe to a nondescript system?

And if was just happenstance, what are the chance that the first extra-solar object we see is an alien probe? Unless there was a space war a million years ago and debris is regularly passing through the solar system, it would be a total fluke.

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Re: "`Oumuamua, the first-known foreign interstellar object to visit the Solar System"

That paper's a great read. [Clicky, for PDF] It's only a page and a half, and you don't need anything more than A level physics.

(Caveat: crashing probes into visiting objects just so we can do a spot of spectroscopic analysis.is probably not a good idea if we think they might be aliens; even if they are friendly, it's not a good way to start a relationship.)

And Appendix A should be forwarded to a certain C Stross. There's one criticism in there I hadn't even thought of. (Ooops, we vaporised our light sail!)

OVH data centre destroyed by fire in Strasbourg – all services unavailable

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According to the tweet, "Mais si vous utilisez le Backup FTP #OVH, vos sauvegardes sont dans un autre datacenter." Which seems relevant to the discussion.

So it appears some of you really don't want us to use the word 'hacker' when we really mean 'criminal'

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Tossed out.

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Coat

NEXT WEEK: why we shouldn't tarnish the noble art of trolling by labelling flamers as "trolls".

Yes, my coat it is the asbestos-lined, troll skin one.

Name True, iCloud access false: Exceptional problem locks online storage account, stumps Apple customer service

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It was indeed the missing "m/s²" after "kg" that I was highlighting.

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Speaking of javascript idiocy. Tescos have some new software on their self service tills. Opt to weigh something and the unladen scales display a weight of "undefinedkg"

GPS jamming around Cyprus gives our air traffic controllers a headache, says Eurocontrol

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Re: Anti-Jam

How many flights to Syria are there?

'Incorrect software parameter' sends Formula E's Edoardo Mortara to hospital: Brakes' fail-safe system failed

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"Except when the braking software fails and they headbutt a wall."

You're equating "safe" with "not crashing". That's not what it means. "Safe" means that when the car headbutts the wall or becomes involved in any of those other "incidents" that can happen in motor racing, the driver gets out and walks away.

Apple, forced to rate product repair potential in France, gives itself modest marks

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Re: Once again

Or certifying their own 737-max...

Splunk junks 'hanging' processes, suggests you don't 'hit' a key: More peaceful words now preferred in docs

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Coat

Re: Primary...

So instead of master/slave. How about president and flunkie?

Google looks at bypass in Chromium's ASLR security defense, throws hands up, won't patch garbage issue

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"Coincidentally, the WontFix bug also turns out to be a WontPay bug: Google's Vulnerability Reward Program reviewed it and decided not to offer any reward."

That's just stingy, isn't it? Fair enough, going forward, once you've made it policy not to pay for ASLR escapes, but it's as mean as HP to refuse to cough up because you're retrospectively marking a mechanism as defunct.

Qualcomm under fire for 'anticompetitive' patent shenanigans causing pricey UK smartphones

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Re: Overpriced phone?

That's what's nice about this - we get cash that otherwise would have gone to Tim Cook's bonus.

SpaceX small print on Starlink insists no Earth government has authority or sovereignty over Martian activities

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Mushroom

First mpver advantage

Yes, but while he's the only company who can get people there, he will have a certain leverage. (Cf Facebook vs Australian News.) And once Musk's system is established, well, let's hope he's not building tripods.

Facebook and Australia do a deal: The Social Network™ will restore news down under and even start paying for it

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Big Bash...

As an outsider, it sounds like Facebook won. Splashing around some cash is the cost of running a successful international monopoly. But when some backwater government took the piss, Facebook reminded them who had the real power, and the locals backed down and modified their request to fit the line in Facebook's accounts.

The perils of non-disclosure? China 'cloned and used' NSA zero-day exploit for years before it was made public

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Re: failure to take long view

"A 50,000 line program, a good developer has a reasonable chance of staying on top of threats."

And bugs appears as soon as 50-kloc programs start interacting with each other. If you have 10 then there are up to 10! (~3 million) potential interactions. The only difference between your approach and having a larger program broken into strong, orthogonal modules is semantics. If it takes half a million lines of code to solve a problem, then it going to take half a million lines whether you write it as 1 or 10 programs.