When everyone is seeing 50% failure/year, it doesn't take long until spares just can't be found.
(If you're curious why anyone would put up with that sort of thing - the software that works only works on a machine old enough that only very old drives can attach to it. And since demand at the time was maybe 1% of the peak, you'd be using old drives until about 90% ever made had failed.)
At what point do you look at emulation of the system?
I supported an *old* customer tracking/billing system for a local oper for a while. I was able to move him off the 80286 to a new Pentium 4 (at the time) and was able to tune a QEMU system to support him correctly. Hardest part was supporting the printer (app was hardcoded for a positively ancient HP Laser, or an Oki dot matrix).
yes, once the FACS is locked a fuse is blown preventing any changes to the FACS array, so while its cells are Flash (and technically erasable) the ability to write or erase them is hardware blocked. The enforcement on the rest of the memory arrays is firmware blocked based on the FACS settings. Of course you lose the ability to TRIM, and if you don't write an entire block you lose the remainder (flash must be written block at a time, so to write a partial block it's a read-erase-write step, usually implemented as read-modify-write[another block]-erase[initial block]). -nB
This should actually be cheaper to manufacture than typical USB sticks since you would not need to provide "erase" circuitry nor would you need to have wear-leveling logic in the device's firmware.
Former Flash validation engineer here... Sadly not the case. The erase circuitry will still be needed if only so you can adequately run test patterns on the parts. Have to return the device to 0xFF's after testing so your customers can use it.
That said, there is the ability to disable erase in the field by setting a bit in the FACS array as the last step of testing.
The first in my house was a 286 w/ ST 225, but my first that was *mine* was an older 8088 with an ST512 FH 5MB disk. I was so f-ing proud of myself for that machine (built with hand me down parts and bits I bought/was given at the old swap meet I went to).
Where are you going to put that kind of data, [...] Another drive? Well, unless you buy at least three of these then that will get expensive fast, requiring multiple older drives per one of these.
Well, My use case makes this what is likely to happen. I'll drop one of these in the system and it will act as the WORM drive for bulk data. As the data is created it is written to smaller/faster disks (still spinning rust, whatever 2.5" is cheapest/gig, or even previously used drives that have been tested clean). Once a dataset is complete it will be written to the WORM drive, once the smaller disk is full it is pulled from the system, put on the shelf and a new blank put in in it's place. Instant offline backups.
There is an SSD who's entire existence is dedicated to maintaining the table of datasets -> offline disk # & Hash of dataset for bitrot checks. It's an old 40 gig Intel disk.
I've found that as particularly larger disks come out I migrate the WORM to a new larger WORM and now I have the old WORM + initial creating disks all available as backups. It's a system that I've been using for about 6 years now without any issue (and with a couple disk failures and bit-rot incidents to validate my system). -nB
My company gave *everyone* a Dot for christmas. I gave it to my ex wife as a "from the kids" present. Saved me from spending actual $$ on my ex, so I still appreciate it, but not having it in my house.
I don't know, but I'm working on configuring my phone to use fingerprints, but perma lock the print sensor and require only a passphrase after 5 bad attempts (so just bounce on it with an unregistered finger if in danger of compromise).
yes, you do. I have three email accounts, two I don't host and they are used as backup accounts for my domain hosting account (which is itself hosted on my own domain). If, for whatever reason, I lose my domain, then I'd also lose my primary email, but would be able to use the 3rd party email as a second authenticator.
Heck the Uni could have just had "uni.recovery@gmail.com" and a secure password and they'd be okay. Preferably with a U2F key or two linked to it, and said key(s) in a safe. -nB
While I think we all agree that nothing is invincible, you want it to be a very hard problem to break, and one that the site owner can't facilitate. Further you want tamper evidence, thus even if he's served an NSL with gag any action on it will betray that something's up.
Most of those reasons for pirating are because they can't get the content very easily in a legal way. I guess most people are willing to pay, as long as it doesn't get too complicated.
I would rather pay in money than in time and frustration. I WILL NOT pay in both money and time/frustration.
This is the perfect summary. I *pay* for Netflix && Amazon Prime. I don't expect to see something in my streams when it's new to the theaters, or even when it first hits shelves on disk (though it'd be nice), but when I can't stream a 5yo movie/TV series then fuck it, off to usenet to pull down a copy.
It really is that simple. I used to pirate piles of shit when I was younger, now it's not worth the hassle unless I really want to see it and my paid services don't make it available.
Yes that's the right way, but in this particular case it looks like something caused a lockout and his personal email is the failsafe. While that should *never* happen, it did. I would then handle it as I said.
As to the escort out mentality: I agree with it. of 100 people you let go, 99 can be saints, but that 1 devil will cost you more than the 200 weeks of pay you "lost" by just paying them not to show up their last pay period.
This is corp property I'm talking about no less. All my employers have had a "Personal use" policy that I strictly follow, e.g. my posing on/. here. I never store business critical *anything* on my computer, nor do I store personal critical anything on my computer. My laptop is used as a disposable asset; upon return it's wiped. That said, I think the only reason I've never had grief about said policy is that my last email to my boss has always been the UNC path to all data, source, docs, etc.
It sounds like someone else setting up the account used Williams's personal email to link him in, and he never removed it (likely because a lockout could ensue). I am not so sure that he is really to blame here. Any equipment that has seen any mixed personal/business use has always been forensically wiped prior to returning to my employers. None have ever complained.
Hoarding passwords is a dick move and not okay. Even as PO'd as I am at my former employer, if I was in a similar situation I would have made them the offer of: re-instate my work domain account and email, give me a cube for a week, and pay me as a contractor on a 1099 for that week. In exchange I'll use my personal email account that someone else (apparently) linked to unwind this and remove my access after adding someone else and verifying their access works.
That is reasonable and prevents me from working for free, disentangles the mess, and most importantly to the court system, doesn't look like an extortion attempt.
Because Asian and White males are ignored. They won't blow the whistle because they saw what happened to people like me (and a couple others) who dared to not agree with the progrom. One was a quite Sr manager who simply had enough and sent a blistering email to executive management, direct management, and his staff.
Yes it's illegal. No you can't prove it. Yes I talked to a lawyer. Yes I followed his advice to walk away (he gave compelling reasons, and there was *lots* more to my case than just this). Yes I took the money that was on the table in exchange for waiving my right to sue. (not to be a witness though, so if someone else were to speak out I could testify).
If you stop climbing the greasy pole to [...] go home early to see the kids
Single dad here: *yup*. Ultimately cost me a good job because blokes are not expected to care for their kids. Had I been a woman needing a flexible schedule no one would have dared to make a fuss.
You don't hire to fill quotas unless you're government. You hire the best candidate to do a job.
Tell that to Intel Corp. and their "diversity initiative". Managers were essentially* barred from hiring men unless from a distinct minority (black, hispanic, american indian).
*I don't believe there is written directive to this end, but more than one manager told me directly that this was the case and that it was not uncertain that their own performance reviews depended on their "diversity".
Unrelated to SF, but related to pervasive AI: Notice those dog or fawn or cat faces people are overlaying on their snapchat shots? That is an impressive bit of AI and machine visual processing. Something that would have been laughably expensive 5 years ago.
good point. I suppose the low limit would be doing that while compressing the text stream via a pre-shared library and assuming optimum (no ECC required) communication channel?
I got the same as you. 2.59GB/year Still damn impressive as 250GB m2 SSDs would hold ~ a century of voice.
Now, assuming that you are not talking continuously (say you talk 1/3 of the day; 8 hours of continuous talking; that's a lot) then you're at 60 GB/70Yr and that *is* valid for a high(ish) end smartphone.
Slashdot Mirror
Case in point:
Ken Block's Gymkhana V in SF. (still my Fav).
I sooooo wish I knew when they were filming there, I would have made the trip to go watch.
When everyone is seeing 50% failure/year, it doesn't take long until spares just can't be found.
(If you're curious why anyone would put up with that sort of thing - the software that works only works on a machine old enough that only very old drives can attach to it. And since demand at the time was maybe 1% of the peak, you'd be using old drives until about 90% ever made had failed.)
At what point do you look at emulation of the system?
I supported an *old* customer tracking/billing system for a local oper for a while. I was able to move him off the 80286 to a new Pentium 4 (at the time) and was able to tune a QEMU system to support him correctly. Hardest part was supporting the printer (app was hardcoded for a positively ancient HP Laser, or an Oki dot matrix).
that fucking hurt me to read!
Good god man you must be in marketing (or engineering and turned to the dark side).~
Or a U2F key in a secure location (like a safe deposit box).
I believe you may be correct on the models and my brain merged them together.
I had a 5MB, and later acquired a 10.
yes, once the FACS is locked a fuse is blown preventing any changes to the FACS array, so while its cells are Flash (and technically erasable) the ability to write or erase them is hardware blocked. The enforcement on the rest of the memory arrays is firmware blocked based on the FACS settings. Of course you lose the ability to TRIM, and if you don't write an entire block you lose the remainder (flash must be written block at a time, so to write a partial block it's a read-erase-write step, usually implemented as read-modify-write[another block]-erase[initial block]).
-nB
This should actually be cheaper to manufacture than typical USB sticks since you would not need to provide "erase" circuitry nor would you need to have wear-leveling logic in the device's firmware.
Former Flash validation engineer here...
Sadly not the case. The erase circuitry will still be needed if only so you can adequately run test patterns on the parts. Have to return the device to 0xFF's after testing so your customers can use it.
That said, there is the ability to disable erase in the field by setting a bit in the FACS array as the last step of testing.
The first in my house was a 286 w/ ST 225, but my first that was *mine* was an older 8088 with an ST512 FH 5MB disk. I was so f-ing proud of myself for that machine (built with hand me down parts and bits I bought/was given at the old swap meet I went to).
Where are you going to put that kind of data, [...] Another drive? Well, unless you buy at least three of these then that will get expensive fast, requiring multiple older drives per one of these.
Well, My use case makes this what is likely to happen.
I'll drop one of these in the system and it will act as the WORM drive for bulk data.
As the data is created it is written to smaller/faster disks (still spinning rust, whatever 2.5" is cheapest/gig, or even previously used drives that have been tested clean). Once a dataset is complete it will be written to the WORM drive, once the smaller disk is full it is pulled from the system, put on the shelf and a new blank put in in it's place. Instant offline backups.
There is an SSD who's entire existence is dedicated to maintaining the table of datasets -> offline disk # & Hash of dataset for bitrot checks. It's an old 40 gig Intel disk.
I've found that as particularly larger disks come out I migrate the WORM to a new larger WORM and now I have the old WORM + initial creating disks all available as backups. It's a system that I've been using for about 6 years now without any issue (and with a couple disk failures and bit-rot incidents to validate my system).
-nB
My company gave *everyone* a Dot for christmas.
I gave it to my ex wife as a "from the kids" present.
Saved me from spending actual $$ on my ex, so I still appreciate it, but not having it in my house.
I don't know, but I'm working on configuring my phone to use fingerprints, but perma lock the print sensor and require only a passphrase after 5 bad attempts (so just bounce on it with an unregistered finger if in danger of compromise).
Haven't quite gotten there yet, but trying.
yes, you do.
I have three email accounts, two I don't host and they are used as backup accounts for my domain hosting account (which is itself hosted on my own domain). If, for whatever reason, I lose my domain, then I'd also lose my primary email, but would be able to use the 3rd party email as a second authenticator.
Heck the Uni could have just had "uni.recovery@gmail.com" and a secure password and they'd be okay. Preferably with a U2F key or two linked to it, and said key(s) in a safe.
-nB
$15 annually...
so, yeah, that's a year of service for $15
While I think we all agree that nothing is invincible, you want it to be a very hard problem to break, and one that the site owner can't facilitate. Further you want tamper evidence, thus even if he's served an NSL with gag any action on it will betray that something's up.
In other news, I'll be a customer again :)
Most of those reasons for pirating are because they can't get the content very easily in a legal way. I guess most people are willing to pay, as long as it doesn't get too complicated.
I would rather pay in money than in time and frustration. I WILL NOT pay in both money and time/frustration.
This is the perfect summary.
I *pay* for Netflix && Amazon Prime. I don't expect to see something in my streams when it's new to the theaters, or even when it first hits shelves on disk (though it'd be nice), but when I can't stream a 5yo movie/TV series then fuck it, off to usenet to pull down a copy.
It really is that simple. I used to pirate piles of shit when I was younger, now it's not worth the hassle unless I really want to see it and my paid services don't make it available.
Yes that's the right way, but in this particular case it looks like something caused a lockout and his personal email is the failsafe. While that should *never* happen, it did. I would then handle it as I said.
As to the escort out mentality: I agree with it. of 100 people you let go, 99 can be saints, but that 1 devil will cost you more than the 200 weeks of pay you "lost" by just paying them not to show up their last pay period.
This is corp property I'm talking about no less. /. here.
All my employers have had a "Personal use" policy that I strictly follow, e.g. my posing on
I never store business critical *anything* on my computer, nor do I store personal critical anything on my computer.
My laptop is used as a disposable asset; upon return it's wiped.
That said, I think the only reason I've never had grief about said policy is that my last email to my boss has always been the UNC path to all data, source, docs, etc.
It sounds like someone else setting up the account used Williams's personal email to link him in, and he never removed it (likely because a lockout could ensue). I am not so sure that he is really to blame here.
Any equipment that has seen any mixed personal/business use has always been forensically wiped prior to returning to my employers.
None have ever complained.
Hoarding passwords is a dick move and not okay.
Even as PO'd as I am at my former employer, if I was in a similar situation I would have made them the offer of:
re-instate my work domain account and email, give me a cube for a week, and pay me as a contractor on a 1099 for that week.
In exchange I'll use my personal email account that someone else (apparently) linked to unwind this and remove my access after adding someone else and verifying their access works.
That is reasonable and prevents me from working for free, disentangles the mess, and most importantly to the court system, doesn't look like an extortion attempt.
Because Asian and White males are ignored.
They won't blow the whistle because they saw what happened to people like me (and a couple others) who dared to not agree with the progrom. One was a quite Sr manager who simply had enough and sent a blistering email to executive management, direct management, and his staff.
Yes it's illegal.
No you can't prove it.
Yes I talked to a lawyer.
Yes I followed his advice to walk away (he gave compelling reasons, and there was *lots* more to my case than just this).
Yes I took the money that was on the table in exchange for waiving my right to sue. (not to be a witness though, so if someone else were to speak out I could testify).
If you stop climbing the greasy pole to [...] go home early to see the kids
Single dad here: *yup*.
Ultimately cost me a good job because blokes are not expected to care for their kids. Had I been a woman needing a flexible schedule no one would have dared to make a fuss.
You don't hire to fill quotas unless you're government. You hire the best candidate to do a job.
Tell that to Intel Corp. and their "diversity initiative". Managers were essentially* barred from hiring men unless from a distinct minority (black, hispanic, american indian).
*I don't believe there is written directive to this end, but more than one manager told me directly that this was the case and that it was not uncertain that their own performance reviews depended on their "diversity".
Unrelated to SF, but related to pervasive AI:
Notice those dog or fawn or cat faces people are overlaying on their snapchat shots?
That is an impressive bit of AI and machine visual processing. Something that would have been laughably expensive 5 years ago.
Yes AI is very pervasive already.
good point. I suppose the low limit would be doing that while compressing the text stream via a pre-shared library and assuming optimum (no ECC required) communication channel?
I got the same as you. 2.59GB/year
Still damn impressive as 250GB m2 SSDs would hold ~ a century of voice.
Now, assuming that you are not talking continuously (say you talk 1/3 of the day; 8 hours of continuous talking; that's a lot) then you're at 60 GB/70Yr and that *is* valid for a high(ish) end smartphone.
hence why ./ disallows, afterall we all know systemd causes cancer.