@rjek@mastodon.social
@rjek@mastodon.social avatar

rjek

@rjek@mastodon.social

I sigh at computers, especially the ones in cars, for a living. Interested in audio, hi-fi, music, and curry.

Manchester-based Northern Irish-born English Southerner.

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.

rjek, to random
@rjek@mastodon.social avatar

Thoughts so far on the xz supply chain attack:

  • Stop patching security-based software (Debian have been caught out here before).
  • Build from version control not tarballs, it is its own sort of verifying blockchain.
  • Keystone projects should use PGP webs of trust for contributors.
  • Weigh a communication's value based on historic impressions: unknown names should carry less.
  • People expressing urgency is always the first indicator of a scam.
  • Measure, profile, report, investigate.
philpem, to random
@philpem@digipres.club avatar

I've been getting a ton of "bank security department" scam calls recently, so today I decided to play with them. (I figure it robs them of time they could use to scam someone's granny)

them: "Hello I am from Visa bank security department, how may I help you?"
me: "What bank are you from?"
them: "Lloyds bank."
me: "That's funny, I closed my account with you 25 years ago."
them: "Sorry sir, we're a little late."

Yeah, late, I'll say. About right for Lloyds though!

rjek,
@rjek@mastodon.social avatar

@philpem It's about as easy to spoof as the From: on an email or a return address on the back of a postal envelope: ie, trivially. :/

rjek, to random
@rjek@mastodon.social avatar

I love Lancashire Sauce, and I recently I ordered a bottle because I've not had any in ages. "Using the same original recipe passed down through the generations" and "created over 100 years ago".

The three most abundant ingredients are water, acetic acid, and ammonia caramel colouring. I doubt those last two are written in Grandma Entwistle's recipe notebook.

pwaring, to random
@pwaring@fosstodon.org avatar

Looks like the NHS app has finally got waiting list data, at least for my trust. It's only an estimate at the moment based on average waiting times for hospital + specialism, but better than nothing.

I hope at some point they get patient-level data, so you can see that you are in queue position X with an estimated time of Y.

rjek,
@rjek@mastodon.social avatar

@pwaring It now shows me that there is a referral I need to action for an appointment that took place in October. There is no provided way for me to "action" it.

pwaring, to random
@pwaring@fosstodon.org avatar

Am I right in saying that, on every processor in commercial use (i.e. not something an academic has dreamed up to discuss a hypothetical that no one else cares about), ADD is a faster (fewer cycles) operation than DIV?

(I know that a compiler might change a division to MUL, ADD, and some form of shift.)

rjek,
@rjek@mastodon.social avatar

@pwaring Do you want the long answer or the short answer? (The short answer is 'yes'.)

rjek,
@rjek@mastodon.social avatar

@pwaring Division doens't map well onto how hardware works or how we represent numbers, there is an answer here https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/280673/why-does-hardware-division-take-much-longer-than-multiplication which explains the complexity nicely, and multiply is still more complicated than add.

rjek, to random
@rjek@mastodon.social avatar

Lunchtime hacking: Wrote a program that uses libunicorn to load a RISC OS binary from disc and run it. This program (and probably only this program) works:

SWI OS_GetEnv
MOV r13, r1
ADR r0, helloworld
BL puts
MOV r2,
SWI OS_Exit

.puts
; print a string from R0
STMFD r13!, {r0-r1, r14}
MOV r1, r0
.puts_loop
LDRB r0, [r1], #1
CMP r0, #0
LDMEQFD r13!, {r0-r1, pc}^
SWI OS_WriteC
B puts_loop

.helloworld
DCB "Hello, world!", 10, 0

pwaring, to random
@pwaring@fosstodon.org avatar

deleted_by_author

    •
    rjek,
    @rjek@mastodon.social avatar

    @pwaring Change the interpreter of the script to do the check? (Or change the #! line which could be done with a sed script trivially)

    rjek,
    @rjek@mastodon.social avatar

    @pwaring Oh dear. OK, move php out of the way and have a wrapper.

    rjek, to random
    @rjek@mastodon.social avatar

    Google Bard just parroted my own code that I wrote 14 years ago back at me, but this time with a buffer overflow and an invitation to relicense it under different ownership.

    rjek, to random
    @rjek@mastodon.social avatar

    Sigh - spammer steals somebody's SendGrid (an email service provider - ie, mass marketing email flinger) credentials, uses it to send phishes to steal more - so now the phish asking for your SendGrid credentials has come from SendGrid and all the major mail providers give such ESPs a lot of leeway because of the amount of legit email that is sent. The recentralisation of the previously federated email system is getting worse and worse.

    TechConnectify, (edited ) to random

    Oh my gosh I just figured it out.

    Okay, all you open source evangelist people: your knee-jerk reaction to come at people who are talking about a problem with whatever commercial software they use and suggest Your Favorite Alternatives™ is exactly like saying "why don't you just buy a house?" to someone complaining about their landlord.

    EDIT: There's more than one post here. Pick apart the analogy if you will but... beware you'll be proving the point.

    rjek,
    @rjek@mastodon.social avatar

    @TechConnectify In my experience there are two kinds of people who use open/free software: The puritans who use it for philosophical reasons, and the pragmatists who use it because it suits them.

    The puritanical ones will always, in my experience, be very loud and angry about what other people do with their time, effort, and money.

    The pragmatic ones use whatever tool is best for a job, be it open/free or commercial.

    popey, to ubuntu
    @popey@ubuntu.social avatar

    Well, this is interesting. The Core (snap only) Desktop Preview hides the ~/snap folder by default. We used to get a bunch of complaints about that folder "polluting" the home directory. The irony that an all snap build of Ubuntu hides that by default is mildly amusing!

    A desktop screenshot showing hidden files. Included is the "snap" folder, with a red box around it to highlight its presence.

    rjek,
    @rjek@mastodon.social avatar

    @popey What was wrong with ~/.local/snap ?

    rjek, to random
    @rjek@mastodon.social avatar

    I wish you could buy decongestants that work without having to go to a pharmacist and try to convince them you're not cooking meth. Phenylephrine is about as effective as glue as a decongestant.

    rjek, to random
    @rjek@mastodon.social avatar

    Congratulations go to aweber.com for enforcing double opt-in on mailing lists, and an explosive bag of glitter to the Etsy seller who tried to add me to their spam cannon even though I very carefully unticked the "bother me with marketing every day for the rest of my days" checkbox.

    pwaring, to random
    @pwaring@fosstodon.org avatar

    Public sector: Gosh it's really hard to find good developers.

    Devs: What's the salary?

    PS: 20% below market rates.

    Devs: Can we work remotely?

    PS: Min 2 days/week in the office.

    Devs: Any cool interesting technology?

    PS: Does an ageing AIX mainframe count?

    rjek,
    @rjek@mastodon.social avatar

    @pwaring I have 40 million records of the temperature in the pub's cellar.

    rjek, to random
    @rjek@mastodon.social avatar

    Your eyelids cover the front of your eyes, not the top - surely they should be called eyedoors?

    rjek,
    @rjek@mastodon.social avatar

    @penguin42 I sleep on my side!

    rjek, to random
    @rjek@mastodon.social avatar

    Decided for a laugh to give Temu a try. A £10 external USB 3 DVD burner.

    It arrived. It's a DVD-ROM drive, not a burner. It does not enumerate. It does not even draw any power from USB.

    No-quibble refund from Temu, no need to return. Might crack it open to see how much of it is steel blocks and air.

    rjek,
    @rjek@mastodon.social avatar

    @jmacarthur Uncertain, I can't even get it to open its tray to find out!

    rjek,
    @rjek@mastodon.social avatar

    @penguin42 @jmacarthur @Dtl OK, I've opened it - it contains a Hitachi/LG mech from 2006 and a small bridge board with a USB 2 (not 3) micro B with the cable going out the case.

    If they had thought to actually connect them together, it would have worked out of the box. Reseating everything and it works!

    For audio ripping, it overreads 102 samples and manages 9X.

    It will at least burn CDs, apparently.

    Lots of new old stock bodged together, I think?

    The label from a Hitachi/LG slim optical drive, it says it was manufactured in Feburary 2006.

    rjek,
    @rjek@mastodon.social avatar

    @penguin42 @jmacarthur @Dtl Actually I think the drive might be second-hand.

    cstross, to random
    @cstross@wandering.shop avatar

    Tired: buying an iPhone or iPad with maxed-out internal SSD.

    Wired: buying an iPhone or iPad then also buying a pocket USB-C hub that has a slot for you to plug in a third-party M.2 NVMe SSD of your choice to stash your movie library on. (Because the Files app on iOS is happy to talk to an external SSD.)

    rjek,
    @rjek@mastodon.social avatar

    @cstross Now they're using USB C, you might be able to plug the whole thing into a hotel room telly and watch it there due to the magic of USB Alt Mode!

    rjek,
    @rjek@mastodon.social avatar

    @cstross Hmm, now I need to pack a set of screwdrivers.

    rjek, to random
    @rjek@mastodon.social avatar

    How disappointing is a vegan croissant likely to be given I find all butter croissants disappointing because they're not literally entirely butter?

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