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Microsoft Dev's 30-Year-Old Temporary Code Still Lingers in Windows 11

Slashdot - Mon, 2024-03-25 14:40
Dave Plummer, a former Microsoft developer, has shared the story behind the Format drive dialog box in Windows, which has remained unchanged for nearly three decades. According to Plummer, the dialog box was created as a temporary solution during the porting of code from Windows 95 to Windows NT, due to differences between the two operating systems. Plummer jotted down all the formatting options on a piece of paper and created a basic UI, intending it to be a placeholder until a more refined version could be developed. However, the intended UI improvement never materialized, and Plummer's temporary solution has persisted through numerous Windows versions, including the latest Windows 11. Plummer also admitted that the 32GB limit on FAT volume size in Windows was an arbitrary decision he made at the time, which has since become a permanent constraint.

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Categories: Linux fréttir

GoFetch security exploit can't be disabled on M1 and M2 Apple chips

TheRegister - Mon, 2024-03-25 14:30
For now, cryptographic work should be run on slower Icestorm cores

The GoFetch vulnerability found on Apple M-series and Intel Raptor Lake CPUs has been further unpacked by the researchers who first disclosed it.…

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Boeing top brass stand down amid safety turbulence

TheRegister - Mon, 2024-03-25 14:04
They were all planning on leaving anyway, company claims

The door plug on Boeing's C-suite has flown off, taking the CEO, board chair, and head of its commercial airplane division with it.…

Categories: Linux fréttir

The way Apple, Alphabet implemented DMA rules 'seems to be at odds' with law

TheRegister - Mon, 2024-03-25 13:32
European Commission says 12-month investigation could lead to fine of up to 10% of global revenue

The European Commission is opening its first official probes under the Digital Markets Act with a focus on curbing the power of tech titans Apple, Meta, and Alphabet via threats of heavy fines.…

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Gelsinger woos Musk as Intel seeks to drum up Foundry Services business

TheRegister - Mon, 2024-03-25 13:12
It's just not economical for Chipzilla to be the factories' only customer these days

Intel is keen to get its Foundry Services strategy off the ground and draw in more customers. With this in mind, it's made a move to cultivate Elon Musk and finalized an agreement with Arm intended to make it easier for chip designers to get their products built.…

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Fujitsu's 30-year-old UK customs system just keeps hanging on

TheRegister - Mon, 2024-03-25 12:30
After declaring the end of CHIEF at least five times in as many years, HMRC hopes this June 2024 date will stick

The UK's tax collector has named the date for migrating from a 30-year-old customs IT system for the fifth time in as many years after planning its replacement for more than a decade.…

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Boeing CEO, Many Other Top Execs To Step Down in Leadership Shakeup at Embattled Plane Maker

Slashdot - Mon, 2024-03-25 12:10
Boeing announced a major leadership overhaul Monday, with CEO Dave Calhoun set to step down at the end of 2024 amid mounting pressure from airlines and regulators over quality and manufacturing issues. Chairman Larry Kellner will also resign and depart the board at Boeing's annual meeting in May, the company said. He will be replaced as chair by Steve Mollenkopf, a Boeing director since 2020. Stan Deal, president and CEO of Boeing Commercial Airplanes, is leaving the company effective immediately. Stephanie Pope, who recently became Boeing's Chief Operating Officer after leading Boeing Global Services, will take over Deal's role. The shakeup comes as the aerospace giant faces increasing scrutiny following a series of production flaws and a recent incident involving a nearly new Boeing 737 Max 9, where a door plug blew out minutes into an Alaska Airlines flight on Jan. 5. Airlines and regulators have been calling for significant changes at Boeing to address these issues and restore confidence in the company's products. The leadership changes appear to be a response to these growing concerns. An excerpt from a letter the CEO wrote to employees, also on Monday: As you all know, the Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 accident was a watershed moment for Boeing. We must continue to respond to this accident with humility and complete transparency. We also must inculcate a total commitment to safety and quality at every level of our company. The eyes of the world are on us, and I know we will come through this moment a better company, building on all the learnings we accumulated as we worked together to rebuild Boeing over the last number of years.

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How would you sum up a decade of Kubernetes?

TheRegister - Mon, 2024-03-25 11:45
The CNCF is looking for a tenth anniversary logo

Logowatch Are you feeling creative? To celebrate ten years of Kubernetes, the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) is seeking a design for an anniversary logo. Perhaps just the letters A and I crudely taped onto a ship's wheel would do the job?…

Categories: Linux fréttir

This Startup Wants to Fix the Housing Market - with Robots

Slashdot - Mon, 2024-03-25 11:34
In a state where housing is expensive to build, to rent, or to buy — and not especially energy efficient — can a big blue robot make a difference? The Boston Globe reports on Reframe Systems, one of the companies "trying robots to make construction more efficient" — in this case, "working alongside humans in an assembly line to build small houses in a factory." [Its cofounders] learned to get robots and humans to work together while at Amazon, which has built more than 750,000 bots in Massachusetts and deployed them to distribution centers around the world. Advising the company are Amy Villeneuve, former chief operating officer of that Amazon division, and Charly Mwangi, a veteran of the carmakers Nissan, Tesla, and Rivian... Standing at one end of Reframe's factory, [cofounder Aaron] Small explained that the company's ambition is to build net-zero houses — houses that produce as much energy as they use — "twice as fast as traditional methods, twice as cheap, and with 10 times lower carbon" emissions. That means using large screws called helical piles to fix the house to the site, instead of a concrete foundation. (Concrete production generates large amounts of carbon dioxide.) The company buys recycled cellulose insulation to fill the walls. Solar panels go on the roof and triple-paned windows in the walls... Reframe's "microfactory" can produce between 30 and 50 homes a year, [cofunder Vikas] Enti said. Eventually, the company aims to set up larger factories around the country, all within an hour's drive of big cities. After a home is trucked to its final destination, "Electrical wires and plumbing are installed in both floors and walls as they're built," according to the article. "Employees toting iPads can refer to digital construction drawings and get step-by-step instructions about tasks from cutting lumber to connecting pipes." One of the co-founders says, "We like to compare it to Lego instructions."

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The UK Digital Information Bill: Brexit dividend or data disaster?

TheRegister - Mon, 2024-03-25 11:00
Move could 'weaken' Brits' personal data rights when info is transferred outside Europe

Comment The UK government's proposed data protection law reform seeks to create a more business-friendly regime, though its implementation could further complicate the international flow of data between Britain and Europe, which potentially outweighs any benefits to business.…

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EU Launches Probes Into Apple, Meta, Google Under New Digital Competition Law

Slashdot - Mon, 2024-03-25 10:30
The European Union has launched investigations into Apple, Meta and Google under its sweeping new digital-competition law, adding to the regulatory scrutiny large U.S. tech companies are facing worldwide. From a report: The suite of probes [Editor's note: the link may be paywalled; official press release here] announced Monday are the first under the EU's Digital Markets Act law, which took effect earlier this month. They come less than a week after the Justice Department sued Apple over allegations it makes it difficult for competitors to integrate with the iPhone, ultimately raising prices for customers. Apple and Google will now face EU scrutiny of how they are complying with rules that say they must allow app developers to inform customers about alternative offers outside those companies' main app stores. The European Commission, the EU's executive arm, said it is concerned about constraints the tech companies place on developers' ability to freely communicate with users and promote their offers. The bloc will also examine changes that Google made to how its search results appear in Europe. The new digital competition law says companies cannot give their own services preference over similar services that are offered by rivals. Another probe will look at how Apple complies with rules that say users should be able to easily remove software applications and change default settings on their iPhones, as well as how the company shows choice screens that offer alternative search engine and browser options.

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UK health department republishes £330M Palantir contract with fewer ██████

TheRegister - Mon, 2024-03-25 10:15
As Good Law Project considers response, ICO slams failure to comply with FoI request

The UK health department has republished its contracts with US spy-tech company Palantir, blanking out fewer sections, following a warning from legal campaigners.…

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Time to examine the anatomy of the British Library ransomware nightmare

TheRegister - Mon, 2024-03-25 09:30
Mistakes years in the making tell a universal story that must not be ignored

Opinion Quiz time: name one thing you know about the Library of Alexandria. Points deducted for "it’s a library. In Alexandria." Looking things up is cheating and you know it.…

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DBA made ten years of data disappear with one misplaced parameter

TheRegister - Mon, 2024-03-25 08:24
Greybeards thought it was clever, making this an educational experience in more ways than one

Who, Me? Welcome once again, dear reader, to Who, Me? – the cathartic corner of The Register wherein, once a week, we hand over to our readers, such as yourself, so that they may unburden themselves about times when things did not quite go according to plan.…

Categories: Linux fréttir

Tired of Streaming? Home-Grown 'Free Blockbuster' Libraries Are Trying to Offer Alternatives

Slashdot - Mon, 2024-03-25 07:34
In 2019 Los Angeles film/TV producer Brian Morrison painted Blockbuster's logo onto an old newspaper box — and then filled it up with used DVDs. "The Free Blockbuster movement slowly gained traction," reports the New York Times — aided at times by social media — "and eventually more than 200 other community boxes had opened from Louisiana to Canada and even Britain." Though it's not clear how many are still operational, a 37-year-old California opened a free "Blockbuster" library outside her home earlier this year, according to the article, "and stocks it with season-specific films, subversive books and free candy." "We are social animals; we want to go out into the world and engage with each other," said Brian Morrison, who keeps a lending library outside his home. He often refills it with DVDs and VHS tapes of TV series, horror movies and, on occasion, signed independent films, and said that it had encouraged interaction with his neighbors. Andrew Kevin Walker, a Los Angeles-based screenwriter, said he had visited secondhand stores especially to seek out films to leave in the boxes, including two sealed James Bond box sets and a copy of "Cobra," a 1986 film written by Sylvester Stallone. "It's an opportunity for people to really share their love of cinema, whether it be their favorite guilty pleasure or their favorite movie of all time," he said. Viewers with streaming fatigue say they are tired of chasing content that moves around an ever-expanding array of platforms or even disappears altogether, and some long for the physical media that was dominant until streaming took over. "I think it's great that folks are doing this, keeping the spirit of DVDs alive, circulating film[s] in and exchanging them," said Joe Pichirallo, a film producer and professor at New York University... Alfonso Castillo, who co-founded a Free Blockbuster on Long Island, N.Y., with his son, said the lending library sees regular turnover with people both taking and dropping off movies, including older people. "My sense is that for them, it's less of this cool novelty sort of ironic thing and more like, finally, there's a place to get DVDs again," he said. Award-winning filmmaker Ava DuVernay misses the commentary tracks on DVDs (along with director's cuts). But more importantly, they told the Times that when it comes to art, "nothing beats holding it in your hand... It is a part of the experience of consuming and experiencing art."

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SoftIron rolls its own server virt stack to joins the 'let's get VMware' crowd

TheRegister - Mon, 2024-03-25 07:33
Banks on allowing BYO external storage to make migrations less painful

Artisanal server vendor SoftIron smells blood in the water since Broadcom's acquisition of VMware led to considerable price hikes for many users, so has developed an alternative server virtualization platform whose key selling point is the ability to run with existing external storage hardware.…

Categories: Linux fréttir

That Asian meal you eat on holidays could launder money for North Korea

TheRegister - Mon, 2024-03-25 06:32
United Nations finds IT contract and crypto scams are just two of DPRK's illicit menu items

If you dine out at an Asian restaurant on your next holiday, the United Nations thinks your meal could help North Korea to launder money.…

Categories: Linux fréttir

Beijing issues list of approved CPUs – with no Intel or AMD

TheRegister - Mon, 2024-03-25 04:15
2024 may be the year of Linux On The Arm-or-RISC-desktop as China moves away from Western tech

AMD and Intel are not present on a list of processors approved by China's Information Security Evaluation Center.…

Categories: Linux fréttir

California's Successful Dam-Removal Project Continues

Slashdot - Mon, 2024-03-25 03:34
The Los Angeles Times checks in on America's largest dam-removal project, which they say is now "revealing a stark landscape that had been underwater for generations." "A thick layer of muddy sediment covers the sloping ground, where workers have been scattering seeds and leaving meandering trails of footprints. In the cracked mud, seeds are sprouting and tiny green shoots are appearing." With water passing freely through tunnels in three dams, the Klamath River has returned to its ancient channel and is flowing unhindered for the first time in more than a century through miles of waterlogged lands. Using explosives and machinery, crews began blasting and tearing into the concrete of one of the three dams earlier this month... The emptying of the reservoirs, which began in January, is estimated to have released as much as 2.3 million tons of sediment into the river, abruptly worsening its water quality and killing nonnative perch, bluegill and bass that had been introduced in the reservoirs for fishing. Downstream from the dams, the river's banks are littered with dead fish. But tribal leaders, biologists and environmentalists say that this was part of the plan, and that the river will soon be hospitable for salmon to once again swim upstream to spawn... [The dams] blocked salmon from reaching vital habitat and degraded the river's water quality, contributing to toxic algae blooms in the reservoirs and disease outbreaks that killed fish... Workers have been drilling holes in the top of the Copco No. 1 Dam, placing dynamite and setting off blasts, then using machinery to chip away fractured concrete. The dam, which has been in place since 1918, is scheduled to be fully removed by the end of August. The smaller Copco No. 2 Dam was torn down last year as the project began. Two earthen dams, the Iron Gate and the John C. Boyle, remain to be dismantled starting in May. If the project goes as planned, the three dams will be gone sometime this fall, reestablishing a free-flowing stretch of river and enabling Chinook and coho salmon to swim upstream and spawn along about 400 miles of the Klamath and its tributaries. Meanwhile, teams of scientists and workers are focusing on restoring the landscape and natural vegetation on about 2,200 acres of denuded reservoir-bottom lands... River restoration advocates are optimistic. They say undamming the Klamath will demonstrate the potential for restoring free-flowing rivers elsewhere in California, and point to initial plans to remove two dams on the Eel River as another promising opportunity.

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Categories: Linux fréttir

Has 'Silicon Valley-style Startup Disruption' Arrived for Book Publishing?

Slashdot - Mon, 2024-03-25 01:34
The Baffler says a new publishing house launched earlier this month "brings Silicon Valley-style startup disruption to the business of books." Authors Equity has "a tiny core staff, offloading its labor to a network of freelancers," and like a handful of other publishers "is upending the way that authors get paid, eschewing advances and offering a higher percentage of profits instead." It is worth watching because its team includes several of the most important publishing people of the twenty-first century. And if it works, it will offer a model for tightening the connection between book culture and capitalism, a leap forward for the forces of efficiency and the fantasies of frictionless markets, ushering in a world where literature succeeds if and only if it sells.... Authors Equity's website presents its vision in strikingly neoliberal corporatespeak. The company has four Core Principles: Aligned Incentives; Bespoke Teams; Flexibility and Transparency; and Long-Term Collaboration. What do they mean by these MBA keywords? Aligned Incentives is explained in the language of human capital: "Our profit-share model rewards authors who want to bet on themselves." Authors, that is, take on more of the financial risk of publication. At a traditional publishing house, advances provide authors with guaranteed cash early in the process that they can use to live off while writing. With Authors Equity, nothing is guaranteed and nothing given ahead of time; an author's pay depends on their book's profits. In an added twist, "Profit participation is also an option for key members of the book team, so we're in a position to win together." Typically, only an author's agent's income is directly tied to an author's financial success, but at Authors Equity, others could have a stake. This has huge consequences for the logic of literary production. If an editor, for example, receives a salary and not a cut of their books' profits, their incentives are less immediately about profit, offering more wiggle room for aesthetic value. The more the people working on books participate in their profits, the more, structurally, profit-seeking will shape what books look like. "Bespoke Teams" is a euphemism for gigification. With a tiny initial staff of six, Authors Equity uses freelance workers to make books, unlike traditional publishers, which have many employees in many departments... Their fourth Core Principle — Long-Term Collaboration — addresses widespread frustration with a systemic problem in traditional publishing: the fetishization of debut authors who receive decent or better advances, fail to earn out, and then struggle to have a career. It's a real problem and one where authors' interests and capitalist rationalization are, as it were, aligned. Authors Equity sees that everyone might profit when an author can build a readership and develop their skill. The article concludes with this prediction. "It's not impossible that we'll look back in twenty years and see its founding as auguring the beginning of the startup age in publishing." Food for thought... Pulp-fiction mystery writer Mickey Spillane once said, "I'm a writer, not an author. The difference is, a writer makes money."

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