Comment Re:Is this a joke? (Score 1) 59
I do have issues on AWS us-east, accesing some services, instances and so on. Also, NPM says they ARE implementing a fix (NPM registry is fully dead) https://status.npmjs.org/
Comment Benchmarks for endusers are pointless now (Score 1) 40
Last benchmark that showed real benefit to users was ACID test. Telling off about the trash that IE always had been.
Nowadays, gains are marginal on JS engines and rendering, while devs fall on same mistakes of old, relying on frameworks' magic to pull it all out, regardless of things like NPM dependency hell, lack of caching strategies, linting and so on. We had ugly images for a long time just to ensure no heavy resources were used; now everyone brute-forces networks because at least it's not a stream.
It seems to be more about how much are you being exposed/sold by your browser+plugins (or how some service workers are killing your machine, go figure why you need 1GB RAM to make web outlook/teams/whatsapp work).
Comment The world after Prism (Score 4, Insightful) 33
Given what everyone learned from Snowden, does this mean we have more or less trust on Meta having full ownership on an undersea cable?
Comment Re: Guardrails? (Score 1) 12
Point being? This was a single manual, conscious change in configuration, made by a human being, that rendered all services useless.
Comment Single point of failure (Score 1) 1
On August 14, 2024 between 23:02 UTC and 23:38 UTC, all GitHub services were inaccessible for all users.
This was due to a configuration change that impacted traffic routing within our database infrastructure, resulting in critical services unexpectedly losing database connectivity. There was no data loss or corruption during this incident.
Submission + - GitHub is down (githubstatus.com) 1
alfabravoteam writes: As of 18:10 GMT-5, Github is showing the Unicorn page for all requests. Git operations sent via HTTP are also affected
Comment Re:Cognitive dissonance (Score 2) 155
Nope. He funded and supported bloody dictators here in South America, just because USA government wanted to avoid anything related to "lefty" policies on governments; his idea was that anything else was better (for USA business, of course). We are still figuring out how to deal with all the horror caused directly by his work. The good thing about him dead is that he is not wasting oxygen anymore; the bad thing is that he should have suffered more before dying.
Obama the drone guy won the Nobel prize as well, so there goes the Nobel prize idea.
Comment Re:I dont see the big deal (Score 1) 232
Same happened with USB-C. A lot of people with less money available didn't notice any change in their habits when Apple was pushed to use it.
Comment Re: There was a reason (Score 3, Informative) 120
This. They publicly spanked MS for relying on lazy SSD manufacturers. Now they shame them because encryption is expensive but, for once, they care about their users (even if it's not the most convenient option).
I avoid Windows like the plague, but this approach to the change in bitlocker is a bit unfair, like shaming those who publish Retbleed and Spectre mitigations.
Comment Bold statement based on not facts (Score 5, Insightful) 261
In fact, places like UK show that deregulation following privatization has brought price on utilities way up, while the companies themselves have only provided dividends to stakeholders while being deep in debt (billions in debt), a debt that is likely to be paid by customers.
The logical fallacy there is strawman. Problem is not regulation (as shown with tenants and landlords, among many examples) but the lobbying. Corrupting elected officers to be lenient with incumbents is corruption, not a fault on regulation. Avoid conflicts of interest on regulators, that's it. Embroiden sponsors on legislator's shirts so we know who are they caring about :)
Comment Re:It's going to be a problem (Score 1) 150
This. Also, something that is not mentioned anywhere in the post: internally, StackExchange as a whole has been deeply and continously questioned by users, with longstanding moderators quitting in the last two years. Changes in how content is licensed and how the network is managed have caused repeated outrage on users. So, SE is asking for money instead of blocking LLVM usage (as reddit did). Aaaaand AI-based answers are still banned due to them not disclosing their source.
The fact volunteer-based moderation got more stranded by AI-sourced answers, making revision more time-consuming (with a lot of scaffolding around blatant false answers) surely adds to other things mentioned across comments (people being laid off, people using other sources, people too lazy to care about peer reviewing).
Submission + - LastPass informs on a security incident, source code compromised (infosecurity-magazine.com)
alfabravoteam writes: Password management company LastPass has published information about a security incident
"We have determined that an unauthorized party gained access to portions of the LastPass development environment through a single compromised developer account and took portions of source code and some proprietary LastPass technical information", reads the official message published.
They also clarify that no user data was lost. "We never store or have knowledge of your Master Password,” the firm said in an FAQ. “We utilize an industry standard Zero Knowledge architecture that ensures LastPass can never know or gain access to our customers’ Master Password", they inform. Hence, no action is required to users to follow.
"We have determined that an unauthorized party gained access to portions of the LastPass development environment through a single compromised developer account and took portions of source code and some proprietary LastPass technical information", reads the official message published.
They also clarify that no user data was lost. "We never store or have knowledge of your Master Password,” the firm said in an FAQ. “We utilize an industry standard Zero Knowledge architecture that ensures LastPass can never know or gain access to our customers’ Master Password", they inform. Hence, no action is required to users to follow.
Submission + - Revisiting the 'Tsar Bomba' Nuclear Test (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader writes: The detonation of the first nuclear bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 is seared into our collective memory, and the world has been haunted by the prospect of a devastating nuclear apocalypse ever since. Less well-known but equally significant from a nuclear arms race standpoint was the Soviet Union's successful detonation of a hydrogen "superbomb" in the wee hours of October 30, 1961. Dubbed "Tsar Bomba" (loosely translated, "Emperor of Bombs"), it was the size of a small school bus—it wouldn't even fit inside a bomber and had to be slung below the belly of the plane. The 60,000-pound (27 metric tons) test bomb's explosive yield was 50 million tons (50 megatons) of TNT, although the design had a maximum explosive yield of 100 million tons (100 megatons).
The US had conducted the first successful test of a hydrogen bomb (codename: Ivy Mike) in 1954 and had been pondering the development of even more powerful hydrogen superbombs. But the Soviets' successful test lent greater urgency to the matter. Ultimately, President John F. Kennedy opted for diplomacy, signing the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty on October 7, 1963. But US nuclear policy—and, hence, world history—might have ended up looking very different, according to Alex Wellerstein, a historian of science at the Stevens Institute of Technology in New Jersey and author of Restricted Data: The History of Nuclear Secrecy in the United States, released earlier this year. He also maintains the NUKEMAP, an interactive tool that enables users to model the impact of various types of nuclear weapons on the geographical location of their choice.
Wellerstein has analyzed recently declassified documents pertaining to the US response to Tsar Bomba during the Kennedy administration. He described his conclusions in a fascinating article recently published in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, coinciding with the 60th anniversary of the test. [...] According to Wellerstein, the US initially sought to minimize the significance of the Soviets' success, officially dismissing it as a political publicity stunt with little to no technical or strategic importance. But the declassified files revealed that, behind the scenes, US officials took the matter very seriously indeed. Physicist Edward Teller in particular strongly advocated in favor of developing two even more powerful hydrogen bombs, with yields of 1,000 and even 10,000 megatons, respectively. While much of Teller's testimony at a secret meeting on the topic remains classified, Wellerstein found that many scientists who were present expressed shock at his proposal. Concerns about the practical use of such a massive weapon, particularly the widespread nuclear fallout, ultimately scuttled those plans.
The US had conducted the first successful test of a hydrogen bomb (codename: Ivy Mike) in 1954 and had been pondering the development of even more powerful hydrogen superbombs. But the Soviets' successful test lent greater urgency to the matter. Ultimately, President John F. Kennedy opted for diplomacy, signing the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty on October 7, 1963. But US nuclear policy—and, hence, world history—might have ended up looking very different, according to Alex Wellerstein, a historian of science at the Stevens Institute of Technology in New Jersey and author of Restricted Data: The History of Nuclear Secrecy in the United States, released earlier this year. He also maintains the NUKEMAP, an interactive tool that enables users to model the impact of various types of nuclear weapons on the geographical location of their choice.
Wellerstein has analyzed recently declassified documents pertaining to the US response to Tsar Bomba during the Kennedy administration. He described his conclusions in a fascinating article recently published in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, coinciding with the 60th anniversary of the test. [...] According to Wellerstein, the US initially sought to minimize the significance of the Soviets' success, officially dismissing it as a political publicity stunt with little to no technical or strategic importance. But the declassified files revealed that, behind the scenes, US officials took the matter very seriously indeed. Physicist Edward Teller in particular strongly advocated in favor of developing two even more powerful hydrogen bombs, with yields of 1,000 and even 10,000 megatons, respectively. While much of Teller's testimony at a secret meeting on the topic remains classified, Wellerstein found that many scientists who were present expressed shock at his proposal. Concerns about the practical use of such a massive weapon, particularly the widespread nuclear fallout, ultimately scuttled those plans.
Submission + - Bug in Microsoft Teams can cause 911 calls to fail (msn.com)
JoeyRox writes: Last week, a Reddit user reported that they werenâ(TM)t able to call 911 using their Pixel 3 and later said they were working with Google support to figure out the issue. Yesterday, Google announced what was causing the issue in a reply to the post: an âoeunintended interaction between the Microsoft Teams app and the underlying Android operating systemâ (via 9to5Google).
Submission + - Boss Says Sorry For 'Blundered' Zoom Firing of 900 Staff (bbc.com)
An anonymous reader writes: The boss of a US mortgage company, who fired hundreds of his staff in a Zoom meeting has said he is "deeply sorry" for the way the lay-offs were handled. The sackings were necessary said Vishal Garg, but he accepted he had "blundered the execution" and "embarrassed" them. "I failed to show the appropriate amount of respect and appreciation for the individuals who were affected," he said in a letter (PDF) on the firm's website. Mr Garg was heavily criticized after he sacked 900 staff in an online meeting. "I am deeply sorry and am committed to learning from this situation and doing more to be the leader that you expect me to be," he said. Mr Garg said he had realized "the way I communicated this news made a difficult situation worse."
