https://www.theregister.com/2021/04/12/who_me/ The Register(r) -- Biting the hand that feeds IT search [ ] # # Sign in Off-Prem All Off-PremEdge + IoTChannelPaaS + IaaSSaaS (X) On-Prem All On-PremServersStorageNetworksHPCPersonal Tech (X) Software All SoftwareAI + MLApplicationsDatabasesDevOpsOSesVirtualization (X) SecurityOffbeat All OffbeatDebatesColumnistsScienceGeek's GuideBOFHLegalBootnotesSite NewsAbout Us (X) Vendor Voice AdobeGoogle CloudGoogle Cloud's ApigeeNutanixRapid7Red hatSophosVeeam Virtru (X) # # # [networks] Networks Quality control, Soviet style: Here's another fine message you've gotten me into Moscow. 1978. It always feels like... somebody's watching me Richard Speed Mon 12 Apr 2021 // 06:13 UTC Share reddit Twitter Facebook linkedin WhatsApp email [https://www.theregis] Copy --------------------------------------------------------------------- Who, Me? We return to the Cold War in today's Who, Me? Start your week with suspected sabotage, computer sleuthery, and a satisfying slug of Grand Marnier deep in the heart of 1970s Moskva. It was 1978 and our reader was working for a firm that had just sold a computer to the company that manufactured the Moskvitch. [networks] Sadly now defunct, the Moskvitch was the must-have car of the time for citizens of the Soviet Union (officially, at least). Despite being the butt of a thousand jokes, demand for the vehicle outstripped supply and people found themselves with a substantial wait before they could get their hands on the rear-wheel-drive engineering marvel. Our reader, who was initially Regomised as "Boris", but whom we've opted to call "Ivan Ivanovich" was sent to the site to investigate multiple mysterious system crashes. [networks] A bit of background: a bespoke application known as "the 'Quality Control' system" ran on this computer. "It was actually a messaging system," Ivan explained, "whereby inspectors at the end of the line could send messages to assembly stations, such as 'rear door installed upside down.' I know it seems laughable now, but at that time, this was big business." However, there were problems. The system crashed at least once per shift, causing delays in production. "An enterprising salesman took advantage of the problem to sell them more memory, and the fault reduced to once a day (they worked two shifts a day)," said Ivan. A bit better, but still not right. The company's top communications experts looked into the problem, but came up empty. And so it was that Ivan who, by his own admission, "knew nothing about comms" was sent to Moscow on a year's contract as Project Manager and given a simple brief: "Just stop the bloody dumps!" At the plant, Ivan shared an office with 13 other programmers and a VDU, which had been negotiated as part of the contract. His job title also scored him his own car and a diplomatic apartment. Not really knowing where to start, he fired up the newfangled screen and watched the internals of the computer doing its stuff. Lighter A floppy filled with software worth thousands of francs: Techie can't take it, customs won't keep it. What to do? READ MORE "I had imagined a dynamic environment," he said, "with messages flying hither and yon as the treasured vehicles issued forth from the track..." He did not see that. What he actually saw was a queue of messages sent to one assembly station. A queue that got bigger and bigger until the memory filled up and the computer crashed. "A little delving," he told us, "showed that the fancy Italian teletype terminals (3-case: upper, lower, Cyrillic) were put into 'send' mode when any key was pressed, and could only return to 'receive' mode when 'send' was pressed. "Someone on the track had learned how to silence the poxy terminal - just press a key!" The bespoke software had no way of knowing what had befallen the terminal and so just kept on sending messages until the computer fell over. The fix was trivial. Ivan told us it was a mere 13-line patch that added a 255-second timeout on the input. What was not trivial was how to test his work. "After much negotiation, a meeting was scheduled at the control centre of the production line for midnight-thirty, after the second shift had closed. "The production manager, the computing manager, the translator, the chief programmer, the protocol (KGB) lady and I - we all assembled in the silent factory. "I loaded the fixed comms software, started a program which sent regular messages to an adjacent teletype, looked at my watch... and pressed a key. We waited. My watch showed 250 seconds, 255... 256... 257... OMG! And then the tty burst forth, pouring out messages until there were no more. "The system clock was a little slow." He headed back to his apartment through the dark and silent city, a large and suitably adult beverage on his mind. As for the remainder of this contract - all 45 weeks of it - Ivan didn't have much to do so amused himself by writing an interactive debugger. Doubtless handy for tracking down issues not related to someone on the production line getting creative with the keyboard. Although the sabotage that had caused the problem in the first place was never mentioned again. On his last day he brought in six bottles of spirits and he and the programmers made many toasts to the quality of the Moskvitch. It was, he admitted, "a very enjoyable day's work" and, lubricated by Cointreau and Grand Marnier, the team spoke more than they had for the whole of the preceding year: "They were human after all!" "I never drove a Moskvitch, though - I had a Lada." [networks] Ever applied a patch under the suspicious eyes of the intelligence services? Or bought a car with a door fitted upside down? Let us know, with an email to Who, Me?. (r) Get our Tech Resources * MORE * Who, Me? * Who-Me Corrections Send us news 104 Comments reddit Twitter Facebook linkedin WhatsApp email Get our Weekly newsletter [networks] Most Read 1. Quality control, Soviet style: Here's another fine message you've gotten me into 2. Stuxnet sibling theory surges after Iran says nuke facility shut down by electrical fault 3. Bless you: Yep, it's IBM's new name for tech services spinoff and totally not a hayfever medicine 4. Fire up that Macintosh II: Retro techhead gives the web a Netscape 1.1 makeover 5. United States' plan to beat China includes dominating tech standards groups - especially for 5G [networks] --------------------------------------------------------------------- [networks] * FCC urges Americans to run internet speed app to counter Big Cable's broadband data fudging Effort to get accurate info gets more serious under new chairwoman Kieren McCarthy in San Francisco Mon 12 Apr 2021 // 22:57 UTC The FCC is encouraging netizens to use its internet speed mobile app in an effort to finally get accurate broadband data across the United States. In an announcement on Monday, the telecoms regulator noted that "the app provides a way for consumers to test the performance of their mobile and in-home broadband networks" and "provides the test results to the FCC." It stops far short of saying that the data will be used to make policy decisions, however, saying only that the figures gathered "will help to inform the FCC's efforts to collect more accurate and granular broadband deployment data." Continue reading * The COVID-19 pandemic is still going - and so is the PC buying spree: Shipments up 55% on the Before Times Highest Q1 figures since 2012 Paul Kunert Mon 12 Apr 2021 // 22:34 UTC It's still boom time for makers of personal computers. The buying frenzy that started in the pandemic has spilled into the first quarter of 2021 with global shipments into the channel swelling by more than half to a staggering 82 million boxes. Each of the top five biggest-selling PC brands reported double digit jumps compared to Q1 2020, and even the Others section - comprised of the industry's also-rans - reported big gains. According to data compiled by Canalys, the total number of PC units shipped globally came in at 82.675 million, up 54.6 per cent year-on-year, or some 29.2 million more machines than were shipped in the opening three months of 2020. Continue reading * Jensen Huang's kitchen gets another viewing as Nvidia teases Arm-powered supercomputing chip Grace Also another data processing unit, system-on-a-chip for self-driving cars Katyanna Quach Mon 12 Apr 2021 // 21:02 UTC GTC Nvidia says it has designed an Arm-based general-purpose processor named Grace for training massive neural networks and powering supercomputers, and plans to ship it in 2023. The news shouldn't come as too much of a surprise. Nvidia has, for instance, its family of Arm-based system-on-chips dubbed the Tegra family, which are aimed at embedded electronics and the Internet of Things. It also hinted it wanted to build its own more powerful processors when it put in a $40bn bid to snap up British chip designer Arm last year. Continue reading * It is 60 years since the first cosmonaut reached orbit and 40 years since the Shuttle first left the launchpad Double anniversary means doubles all round, are we right? Richard Speed Mon 12 Apr 2021 // 20:03 UTC Join us in raising a toast in celebration of both the 60th anniversary of Yuri Gagarin's orbit of the Earth and 40 years since the first Space Shuttle left the pad. Gagarin's flight, on 12 April 1961, marked the first of a human into orbit. The mission, aboard the Vostok 3KA spacecraft, lasted less than two hours from lift-off until Gagarin reached the ground, via parachute, but has continued to resonate through the decades since. Continue reading * Microsoft digs deep for chatty AI specialist Nuance, bids $19.7bn to bolster healthcare chops Hello? Is this thing on? Richard Speed Mon 12 Apr 2021 // 18:58 UTC Microsoft is to buy Nuance Communications for $19.7bn in a bid to bolster its healthcare product line with AI conversational smarts. The deal, which will see Microsoft purchase Nuance for $56 per share (a 23 per cent premium on Friday's closing price), includes Nuance's net debt. The move is not entirely surprising. The companies announced a partnership in the healthcare space in 2019 and Microsoft plans to plug Nuance's tech into the Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare which, Microsoft reckons, will double its Total Addressable Market to almost $500bn. Continue reading * Oracle founder Larry Ellison lands on another lily pad, this time an $80m Florida mansion he intends to tear down To complement his $300m Bond villain base in Hawaii Lindsay Clark Mon 12 Apr 2021 // 18:07 UTC After Oracle announced plans to relocate its headquarters from California to Texas, CTO and founder Larry Ellison said he would not be coming along as he's happy in Hawaii. But he has picked a spot a little closer to the Lone Star State, buying a place in Florida. Yes, if reports are anything to go by, the man of many v-neck sweaters has added to his sizeable property portfolio with the purchase of an $80m Palm Beach mansion overlooking the ocean in the gated Seminole Landing neighborhood. Continue reading * Nvidia shrinks GPUs to help squeeze AI into your data center, make its VMware friendship work Creates two new mini models because it's assumed you won't build silos to host huge hot monsters Simon Sharwood, APAC Editor Mon 12 Apr 2021 // 17:06 UTC GTC Nvidia has created a pair of small data-center-friendly GPUs because it doesn't think customers will get into AI acceleration unless they can use the servers they already operate. The new models - the A10 and A30 - require one and two full-height full-length PCIe slots, respectively. Both employ the Ampere architecture Nvidia uses on its other graphics processors. But both are rather smaller than the company's other GPUs, and that matters in the context of the recently launched AI Enterprise bundle that Nvidia packages exclusively on VMware's vSphere. Before VMware got excited about private and hybrid clouds, it was all-in on server consolidation: turning your server fleet into a logical pool of resources instead of tightly coupling servers to specific applications. Continue reading * Mike Lynch-backed Darktrace to file for London IPO in aftermath of Deliveroo flop LSE document confirms AI infosec company's plans Gareth Corfield Mon 12 Apr 2021 // 16:15 UTC British AI-powered infosec biz Darktrace is to go public in England's capital city, the company told the London Stock Exchange this morning. Sky News reported last night that chief exec Poppy Gustafsson is expected to make around PS20m from the initial public offering, with shares trading on Darktrace expected to open "at around the end of this month." A filing lodged with the London Stock Exchange and published on its website stated that Darktrace's revenues were $199.1m in fiscal year 2020 with a claimed compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 58.3 per cent between 2018 and 2020. Continue reading * New drinking game idea: Down a shot every time Huawei blames US sanctions for the current tech industry woes Plus: 6G is pointless, and will your next car have 'Huawei Inside'? Richard Speed Mon 12 Apr 2021 // 15:28 UTC Those taking a shot each time Huawei uttered the phrase "US sanctions" during the opening of its 2021 Global Analyst Summit would have been sozzled as the company laid a host of ills at the doorstep of Uncle Sam's "entity list". Eric Xu, Huawei's rotating chairman, said this morning he did not hold out much hope that things might change under the Biden administration and warned delegates that he expects the company to remain sat on the naughty step "for a very long time." Xu also blamed US sanctions for the current chip shortage. "Because of the sanctions, we are seeing panic-stockpiling by Chinese companies," he said, telling attendees Huawei estimates that anywhere from three to six months' worth of supply had been snapped up by firms fearful of suffering the same fate as Huawei. Continue reading * Bless you: Yep, it's IBM's new name for tech services spinoff and totally not a hayfever medicine Hello world, meet Kyndryl Paul Kunert Mon 12 Apr 2021 // 14:42 UTC Logowatch It has been a busy couple of months for creatives toiling away in IBM's strategy boutique but the team has conjured marketing magic with a scintillating new brand name that will head up the breakaway Global Technology Services unit. Kyndryl. Whisper it again. Kyndryl. It will be synonymous with quality tech infrastructure services, Big Blue promises. GTS will be spun out into a newly traded public entity in 2021 that until today's daring rebrand was simply known as New Co. "Kyndryl evokes the spirit of true partnership and growth," said Martin Schroeter, CEO at Kyndryl, which is definitely not a rural family dental practice with a sense of humour. Continue reading * FreeBSD gives ARM64 green light for production over x86 alternative's 'growth trajectory' Unix-like operating system is hilarious - even the support is in tiers Tim Anderson Mon 12 Apr 2021 // 13:30 UTC The FreeBSD project will offer "Tier 1" support to 64-bit ARM processors in FreeBSD 13.0, expected to be released shortly. The only other Tier 1 platform is AMD64. FreeBSD defines four tiers of platform support, with only Tier 1 fully supported for production use. Tier 1 architectures have official release images and full documentation. There is also a commitment that changes to the main tree of source code must not "knowingly break the build of a Tier 1 platform." Tier 2 platforms are for developmental and niche architectures, or those reaching end of life. In FreeBSD 13, 32-bit x86 has been demoted to Tier 2 from Tier 1. There is a big difference: Tier 2 platforms are "not supported by the security officer, release engineering, and port management teams." Tier 3 platforms are "experimental" and Tier 4 means it is "not supported in any form." The full table of platform support is here. Continue reading [networks] ABOUT US* * Who we are * Under the hood * Contact us * Advertise with us MORE CONTENT* * Latest News * Popular Stories * Forums * Whitepapers * Webinars SITUATION PUBLISHING* * The Next Platform * DevClass * Blocks and Files * Continuous Lifecycle London * M-cubed Situation Publishing The Register - Independent news and views for the tech community. Part of Situation Publishing SIGN UP TO OUR DAILY NEWSLETTER Subscribe Twitter Facebook LinkedIn feeds no-js Biting the hand that feeds IT (c) 1998-2021 Do not sell my personal information Cookies Privacy Ts&Cs