davidgillon: A pair of crutches, hanging from coat hooks, reflected in a mirror (Default)

Ha! I have succesfully fixed the issue with my hoover (actually a Dyson-style Vax).

I let it get over-full a while ago and since I took it apart and fixed that it hasn't been working very well. It would suck and then start making this pop-pop sound, and not really pick anything up.

I was having another look at it yesterday and realised the pop-pop was actually a hidden (it's underneath the handle) safety valve triggering, which sent me delving through it looking for a hidden blockage. Turned out the hose and the cylinder might be clean, but the floor-head was completely choked between brush and hose with a piece of cardboard (one of those tear-off strips from Amazon packaging), with a completely gross build-up of felt around it. Cue an hour poking things into its various apertures to try and howk it out. Yeuch!

Mission accomplished, I promptly ran it into a bag of rubbish and triggered the safety cut-out as it wrapped itself eight times around the brush *headdesk*

That had reset by this morning (there is a reset button, but I've never gotten that to work, easier just to unplug it and leave it), so I finally managed to hoover the house, which desperately needed it, particularly as there were little black bits of disintegrated faux leather from my office chair that had gotten literally everywhere.

Oh, Intel!

Jan. 4th, 2018 04:55 pm
davidgillon: Text: I really don't think you should put your hand inside the manticore, you don't know where it's been. (Don't put your hand inside the manticore)
Umadoshi pointed out news of Meltdown, an OMG-you-are-fucking-kidding level computer security cock-up by Intel, and Spectre, an only marginally less severe version affecting AMD and ARM as well.

The NYT article covers the implications in a non-technical way, the Register article is better if you understand computer hardware/ software interaction. A second Register article has more details, confirms the vulnerability has been demonstrated, and looks at  implications.

From the Register article:
 

At one point, Forcefully Unmap Complete Kernel With Interrupt Trampolines, aka FUCKWIT, was mulled by the Linux kernel team, giving you an idea of how annoying this has been for the developers.

Do not annoy operating system engineers with microcode-cockups, for they are unsubtle and swift to sarcasm.

Intel Cockups For Dummies summary as I interpret the Register articles:
The kernel is the memory space where your processor does all the secure stuff to access hardware, including holding stuff like passwords.
User processes shouldn't be able to access the kernel.
Every modern Intel processor tries to be clever and speculatively execute code it thinks may be needed next.
Unfortunately this speculative code can access the kernel memory before the processor checks whether it has the security rights to do that.
Hackers could theoretically force the speculative behaviour in such a way as to completely map kernel memory, including stuff like passwords.
Fixing it means completely isolating the kernel rather than pretending to isolate it as currently
This means it will take longer every time your computer needs to access the kernel
The performance hit may be up to 30%, but varying with applications. The suggestion is home users will be hit least

That's Meltdown, Spectre is slightly more arcane, but ultimately amounts to doing the same thing and affects Intel, AMD and ARM.

Linux and Windows updates are being rolled out urgently. A MacOS fix has already rolled out.
No need to panic, but make sure you install the next few security updates.
davidgillon: A pair of crutches, hanging from coat hooks, reflected in a mirror (Default)

Saturday was a bit of a dead loss. It started before I even got out of bed, when I picked up my Kindle to check the time and found it wasn't charging - the cord has been fraying so the problem was fairly obvious. So I googled replacement cords, but left ordering one until later - we'll get back to that.

I was supposed to be going  to [personal profile] kaberett 's housewarming, and was really looking forward to meeting several people face to face - and of course Kaberett, who I haven't physically seen in too long. I was up bright and early and came downstairs to have breakfast on a bright autumnal day,.that was 9AM. By 11AM it was grey, wet and miserable, and I had a splitting headache, which was very clearly pressure related. I suspect I've got a mild sinus infection, but the headache was anything but mild. It eased off slightly after a hot bath, but a trip into centrral London and out the other side looked like a bad idea, particularly when I was spending half my time with a hand clasped over my eye, which really wouldn't work with pushing the chair.  It flared up again in the afternoon, and I was finding noise of any kind irritating, so that was a good, if annoying decision.

So I spent the afternoon playing games on my laptop with the sound turned off. About 4PM I decided I'd better order that cable for the Kindle, and promptly found that I had no internet service. Switching the router on and off didn't fix it, and of course without internet I couldn't check if it was a wider internet outage, or just down to me. When I noticed that my wifi wasn't one of the ones listed as available by the laptop, I realised that it was probably router specific. I only had the Virgin guy out of Wednesday to fix my landline, now I was going to have to get him out for the router.

Today has been better. No headache, and I found a cord that would fit the Kindle and charge it (another would fit, but was too loose to reliably charge it). I did a little bit of finishing up on re-roofing the shed, then decided to finish off reorganizing the bedrooms - relocating the computer desk to the larger back bedroom, so it isn't tucked into the niche in the front bedroom with no room to roll the chair back, and moving the chest of drawers from the back bedroom in exchange. Which turns out to work even better than expected as the niche will hold not just the drawers, but the spare wheelchair with room to spare. Plus the whole arrangement is much more wheelchair accessible for days when I'm not up to walking. The one thing that remains to be done is running an ethernet cable from the front bedroom to back as that's where the cable comes into the house - there's already a phone cable running in the opposite direction, so I know that's doable. (And it's not as if I have a working desktop at the minute, so the delay isn't critical).

Then I sat down to ring Virgin about the router, but thought I'd better check everything over once more, and whoops. When I unplugged the Virgin router to cycle the power I also unplugged the older Linksys router I use as a signal booster - the laptop will hold signal with it much better than with the Virgin Netgear one.  Turns out I'd plugged the chargers back into the wrong routers. The Linksys powerbrick was running very hot, and once I'd plugged the Netgear powerbrick into the Virgin router its wifi signal popped up again - though it did take several minutes, and it was wifi that could talk to the net. Looks like the Linksys powerbrick had enough power to power-up the Virgin router, but not quite enough power to run wifi or talk to the net. Glad I found that one before calling out the engineer!

So now I've got the net back I  can order the replacement Kindle power cords, the ethernet cabling I need, and start seriously looking at what I want to order as a replacement desktop. Plus catch up on a couple of days of social media. Fingers crossed nothing else goes wrong!

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davidgillon: A pair of crutches, hanging from coat hooks, reflected in a mirror (Default)
David Gillon

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