* Posts by ssharwood

176 publicly visible posts • joined 5 Mar 2012

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

ssharwood

Re: Network?

Oh well played.

ssharwood

Insurance job?

ssharwood

Re: So, he was just fired ?

I was tempted to coin the term "Nepo techie" for this piece but wasn't sure the reference would be appreciated

ssharwood

Re: Jazz Cabbage

Thesaura-wha?

Off the top of my head I could have used

Waccy Baccy

'erb

weed

smoke

leaf

Mary J

....

250 million-plus reserved IPv4 addresses could be released – but the internet isn’t built to use them

ssharwood

Re: 10.*.*.*

Yes because internal use of the 240/4 block shows up in global traffic. It's still internal use ... but evidence leaks

VMware's end-user compute products are for sale. Who might buy 'em?

ssharwood

Late to report? No. We reported the divestment plan DURING Broadcom's earnings call. If we weren't first, we were among the first handful to report this.

We then CHOSE to offer commentary on that decision at a later date. And did so without reading the TechTarget piece.

Commentary doesn't always need to follow events closely.

ssharwood

Re: Where do VMware Fusion and the like fit in all of this?

Fusion and Workstation are being kept- they're considered core

Doom turns 30, so its creators celebrate seminal first-person shooter’s contribution to IT careers

ssharwood

Re: "Doom 1993 from the Microsoft Store"

I had the MSFT store icon right there, but Steam isn't installed on this PC.

Don't judge me, please.

Techie labelled 'disgusting filth merchant' by disgusting hypocrite

ssharwood

Aaaah Clapham Junction ... I pased through in the first few days of my time living in London. Having previously only seen touristy and nice residential bits it was quite a revelation ... I later learned that the district was gentrifying. All the 20-somethings I worked with referred to it as 'Claaahm' to denote its upmarket shift.

ssharwood

You had to go there? I thought of a mention while writing this On Call and held back

Airbus takes its long, thin, plane on a ten-day test campaign

ssharwood

Or you could sit in the prison to get to a more interesting place to ride bikes ..

ssharwood

Re: in a 3-3 economy class configuration.

I once set my alarm to get up at 0500 to get a flight from LHR-BKK. But I had forgotten to change my alarm clock from French time so it went off at 0400. Then I had a middle seat and didn't get a wink.

Next, the 12 hour layover in BKK, which I spent being driven around in a TukTuk to see the sights.

On the BKK-SYD leg I fell asleep the minute I sat down, and woke up when the wheels hit the ground.

Best flight ever.

ssharwood

Re: "leaving airlines to decide if they want to cram passengers in"

Not necessarily. QANTAS plans relatively spacious layouts, and premium prices, for the A350s it will fly nonstop from Oz to LHR and JFK.

People won't fly them otherwise.

The iPhone 15 has a Goldilocks issue: Too big or too small. Maybe a case will make it just right

ssharwood

Re: While the world slowly turns n burns.

FWIW I wasn't suggesting it's a vintage phone but that it comes from the 2019 vintage. Fine distinction

Florida Man and associates indicted for conspiracy to steal data, software

ssharwood

Re: The smell of desperation

So here's the thing. When a public figure says "Russia, if you're listening", later tries to induce a foreign power to interfere in domestic politics, tells a zillion lies about an election, and refuses to assist in retrieval of classified documents, I don't see investigations as attacks - I see them as necessary and appropriate. And just the sort of thing that a mature democracy with a strong rule of law encourages and can tolerate.

S.

ssharwood

Re: What does this have to do with tech?

Charges of computer trespass and theft of data seem to me, prima facie, to have quite a bit to do with tech.

ssharwood

Re: The smell of desperation

OK I'll bite. I'll regret it, but here goes.

I just don't get the logic behind the "lawfare" argument. The defendant literally asked Georgia's governor to find him some votes, and has failed to produce any evidence that the election was "rigged". The Georgia indictment points out that his associates tried to mess with voting machines. How is that stuff NOT worthy of investigation? Or condemnation?

I gather another strand of the "lawfare" argument is that the timing of the cases is suspicious given campaigning season has commenced. Yet I suspect that if the indictments had been made earlier, critics would have dismissed them as the result of rushed investigations ... seems there's no way to win against this argument.

I say from a distance and without a vote to cast - but as an increasingly stunned observer of US politics which from down here looks to be dominated by ideology rather than a genuine interest in governance.

Microsoft to hike prices in Australia and New Zealand

ssharwood

Re: On the grounds they oppose freedom of the press

I see what you did there. Nice.

Australia fines tech companies for exploiting foreign tech workers

ssharwood

Re: Sport

Bring on The Ashes. Which our men’s and women’s team both hold. And the women have thrashed all

Comers for years. But yeah the Wallabies are woeful.

WTF is solid state active cooling? We’ve just seen it working on a mini PC

ssharwood

Re: "Frore is confident it can defeat dust": More details please.

There’s a dust filter in place rated to last for years

Pixies keep switching off my morning alarm, says Google Pixel owner

ssharwood

Dad rockers? C'mon Doolittle is a timelessly classic album. Arguably a precursor to Nirvana and much of the 90s Indie scene.

If I didn't work here. I'd be telling The Reg to pull up its socks

IBM teases AI-infused hybrid cloudy upgrade to z/OS - Bingo!

ssharwood

Re: You're not kidding about the buzzwords!

Oh, well played! Wish I'd thought of that!

Oh, 07734! Internet Archive debuts vintage calculator emulator

ssharwood

Re: What no 5318008

The topic came up during editing and we decided not to go there.

Twitter starts auction to flip the bird, furniture, pizza ovens, gadgets galore

ssharwood

Nope: We were first to cover this - https://www.theregister.com/2023/01/13/nasa_software_oracle_overpayment/ - and this - https://www.theregister.com/2023/01/13/microsoft_gdap_double_byte_delays/ - and this - https://www.theregister.com/2023/01/11/teams_premium_more_expensive/ ... and those are just the stories I know we were first with last week.

I could go on. But this Twitter story was written over the MLK day long weekend, and long weekends are always terrible times for news.

And FWIW I think this is real news: Twitter made losses for years and the fact it bought $4000 USB-charging bicycles might tell us why ...

Basecamp details 'obscene' $3.2 million bill that caused it to quit the cloud

ssharwood

Re: "Most of that spend – $759,983 – went on compute"

Nah I just stuffed up. Storage is the largest single line item. Compute comes close. Edited. And strapped self to arse-kicking machine.

Microsoft to move some Teams features to more costly 'Premium' edition

ssharwood

Re: vanilla

Fair cop. Have slapped myself in the vocabulary and will wear the bruise with pride.

Elon Musk to step down as Twitter CEO: Help us pick his replacement

ssharwood
Facepalm

Re: Won't fly

I did worry our list is a bit stale, male, and pale. Thanks for the suggestion.

ssharwood

Re: Ughhh...

Which is why we asked for other suggestions. C'mon!

Japanese convenience store chain opens outlet staffed by avatars and robots

ssharwood

Re: Automation may keep corporate costs down, but does not keep retail prices down.

Upvote for the Stross reference.

Australia asks FBI to help find attacker who stole data from millions of users

ssharwood

Re: Right to be forogtten

I certainly welcome anything that means the likes of Optus see no need to store masses of personal data. Gov-run IDaaS could be that thing. India has done it. Whether I trust gov.au to build and run it is another matter ...

Ex-Googler Eric Schmidt's think tank warns China could win global tech race

ssharwood

Re: Explanation please

China doesn't need a backdoor. It needs someone who can describe networks to it and identify a weak point, or someone who "forgets" to patch a single server. That someone could be at a customer or a partner. Or a lucky vendor staffer posted overseas who is also a CCP member. The info they provide makes and attack, or seeking intelligence, far easier. Proper spooks know this. See https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/14/opinion/international-world/china-espionage.html for examples.

Retbleed slugs VM performance by up to 70 percent in kernel 5.19

ssharwood

Re: VMware

If Broadcom is directing VMware staffers in India to post stuff to the LKML I'd be rather surprised ... but I am not surprised that in the 6 weeks since kernel 5.19 came out VMware has found the time to test and oublish results.

France levels up local video game slang with list of French terms to replace foreign words

ssharwood

Re: E-sports professionals?

I know ... computer games are a sport?

Whatever you call them, they're big business.

This story just scrapes the surface of the bigness https://www.theregister.com/2020/10/16/lenovo_esports_services/

Accenture announces 'Accenture Song' – not a tune, but a rebrand

ssharwood

Re: I am disappointed.

Do tell - not one I have encountered.

ssharwood

Re: I am disappointed.

Tough crowd.

FWIW I took the approach of letting this one speak for itself - not sure sharper satire is needed on this occasion.

Will Chinese giants defy US sanctions on Russia? We asked a ZTE whistleblower

ssharwood

Re: ElReg doing politics ?

Yup: the book mentions possible personal criminal liability

ssharwood

Re: ElReg doing politics ?

ZTE wasn’t his client. It was his employer. Ashley felt his higher duty was to the law, not his employer. He knew the personal risks. He blew the whistle anyway.

Review: ASUS dual-screen laptop may warm your heart, will definitely warm your lap

ssharwood

Re: "This is a desktop replacement – not a machine for nomads"

Disagree! I find that a messenger bag distributes weight better than a backback, and doesn't make me anywhere near as sweaty. And on a bicycle, the messenger makes for better balance.

Oracle creates new form of free Solaris

ssharwood

Re: digression

POWER and mainframe are absolute cash cows for IBM - they'll be around for as long as that holds true.

New submarine cable to link Japan, Europe, through famed Northwest Passage

ssharwood

Re: Who are the customers?

FWIW I'm aware of cables that have, on day one of operations, already booked so much traffic that they project covering construction costs within 2 years. Cables are surprisingly cheap to build and opex is not enormous.

Reg scribe spends 80 hours in actual metaverse … and plans to keep visiting

ssharwood

Re: What? What flight sim people are doing for ages?

I think the word "Sim" undoes this argument. Zwift and its ilk measure the state of your body, and your real world body determines the outcome of the game, while the game places new demands on your body. But I certainly agree that the flight sim community has been social and networked for ages, and uses virtual recreations of the real world.

Bonkers rocket launch sees craft slip sideways, barely climb and tear up terrain

ssharwood

FWIW I used the embed code that >>should<< have started the vid at the relevant moment. For some reason that didn't work ... a chat with the devs is now on my to-do list.

Pi calculated to '62.8 trillion digits' with a pair of 32-core AMD Epyc chips, 1TB RAM, 510TB disk space

ssharwood

Re: Two questions

Yes All explained in the stuff we linked to.

Microsoft's Cloud PCs debut – priced between $20 and $158 a month

ssharwood

Re: Full circle

Scenarios that require a full-blown Windows desktop to run virtual desktops have always perplexed me.

FBI paid renegade developer $180k for backdoored AN0M chat app that brought down drug underworld

ssharwood

Pineapple on pizza

Is always an abomination, cocaine or not.

It needed saying. So I said it.

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

ssharwood

Reminds me of the Fiber Channel over Token Ring prank from back in the day ... https://blog.fosketts.net/2010/07/16/fibre-channel-token-ring-fcotr/

Chrome release cycle accelerated to four-weekly frenzy

ssharwood

Re: Desktop OS

I tried to be pretty precise in the story by writing "the third-most prevalent OS shipped with new PCs."

I chose that language because you're right - ChromeOS has a smaller installed base than rival OSes.

But that base is substantial. PCs are selling at about 350m/year right now. So that's 35m+ ChromeOS devices we know of. Let's guesstimate that there's another 40m in use from sales in 2019 and 2018 and another 25m sold this year. Even on those lowball numbers that's 100m+ devices whose OS currently has an unknown upgrade path.

ssharwood

Re: Desktop OS

Stacounter measures traffic from OSes. Not prevalence of OSes on newly-shipped devices.

Groupware is not dead! HCL drops second beta of Notes/Domino version 12 and goes all low-code and cloudy

ssharwood

Go nuts

Linus Torvalds labels Super Bowl 'violent version of egg-and-spoon race'

ssharwood

Re: If NFL...

Better to watch: agree. Am NRL tragic. Rise Yeasts!

Better to play: league is brutal. It's all front-on and non-stop and IMHO tends to favour a narrower set of body sizes and shapes. I didn't enjoy it as much as I enjoyed Union. Also have busted nose and messed-up sinuses to show for my very short League flirtation.

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