●● IRC: #techbytes @ Techrights IRC Network: Thursday, July 18, 2024 ●● ● Jul 18 [00:01] *GNUmoon2 (~GNUmoon@iu3dgu93m6mbn.irc) has joined #techbytes [00:03] *x-amarsh04 has quit (Quit: Konversation terminated!) [00:09] *x-amarsh04 (~amarsh04@4bk2ptyysukzu.irc) has joined #techbytes [00:09] *IsambardPrince (~isambardprince@g2xqzhfejbyq2.irc) has joined #techbytes [00:13] *GNUmoon2 has quit (connection closed) [00:23] *GNUmoon2 (~GNUmoon@8vs3q4sn8txdc.irc) has joined #techbytes ● Jul 18 [04:42] schestowitz[TR2] "Microsoft Designer and its AI art will soon land on your PC" [04:42] schestowitz[TR2] x https://www.pcworld.com/article/2401331/microsoft-designer-and-its-ai-art-will-soon-land-on-your-pc.html [04:42] -TechBytesBot/#techbytes-Microsoft Designer and its AI art will soon land on your PC | PCWorld ● Jul 18 [05:30] *parsifal has quit (Quit: Leaving) ● Jul 18 [07:56] schestowitz[TR2]
  • [07:56] schestowitz[TR2]
    Rubenerd
    [07:56] schestowitz[TR2]
    [07:56] schestowitz[TR2]

    This wasnt sponsored by SilverStone! Im just glad people are still making hardware like this. Consumer-grade cases basically only target gamers now, who only want M.2 storage and maybe a 2.5 SSD. This would be a perfect homelab box for running FreeBSD with bhyve and OpenZFS, or NetBSD with nvmm, or a Penguin of some description.

    [07:56] schestowitz[TR2]
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    • [07:56] -TechBytesBot/#techbytes-Rubenerd ● Jul 18 [09:12] schestowitz[TR2] https://www.thelayoff.com/t/1tyrAur0 [09:12] -TechBytesBot/#techbytes- ( status 403 @ https://www.thelayoff.com/t/1tyrAur0 ) [09:12] schestowitz[TR2] " [09:12] schestowitz[TR2] General Electric (GE) makes an interesting case study. The consumer businesses (GE Lighting and GE Appliances) are now controlled by separate companies (Savant and Haier). GE Capital was split between several different companies. The remains of GE were split and renamed into three spinoff companies (GE Aerospace, GE Vernova (formerly GE Power), and GE Healthcare). [09:12] schestowitz[TR2] IBM has been proceeding along a similar path for some time. [09:12] schestowitz[TR2] 29 minutes ago by Anonymous [09:12] schestowitz[TR2] | no reactions [09:12] schestowitz[TR2] Post ID: @1wqu+1tyrAur0 [09:12] schestowitz[TR2] 0 [09:12] schestowitz[TR2] I think another reason for failure is the move away from consumerism, all the big players have either some or a lot of commercial offerings (apple is really just that), but AWS and Micro excel in this area. it makes them a well known brand also outside of just a business vendor. [09:12] schestowitz[TR2] 1 hour ago by whatdoiknow [09:12] schestowitz[TR2] | no reactions [09:12] schestowitz[TR2] Post ID: @1gyo+1tyrAur0 [09:12] schestowitz[TR2] +1 [09:12] schestowitz[TR2] And NCR broke up into 2 publicly traded companies in October 2023: [09:12] schestowitz[TR2] NCR Voyix, focused on digital commerce [09:12] schestowitz[TR2] NCR Atleos, focused on ATMs [09:12] schestowitz[TR2] https://www.ncr.com/ [09:12] schestowitz[TR2] 7 hours ago by Anonymous [09:12] schestowitz[TR2] | 1 reaction (+1/-0) [09:12] schestowitz[TR2] Post ID: @1fig+1tyrAur0 [09:12] schestowitz[TR2] +4 [09:12] schestowitz[TR2] This is just one person's opinion. I think that, in terms of relevance to computing in general, IBM peaked in the 1990s with the Power processor and its various follow-ons. That architecture really was (and is) very good: it's clean; it's uncluttered; it delivered high performance computing; it was somewhat daring in its SMP memory system (again, enabling high performance but requiring thoughtful system programming.) [09:12] schestowitz[TR2] It was intriguing enough to get Apple to make it their Mac processor for a while. One variant, CELL, was used by SONY in some generations of Play Station. There are also specialized embedded versions. Even now, if you go to top500.org, this architecture is in the 9th most powerful supercomputer as of June 2024. "Back in the day," let's say 2006, this architecture was used in the first, second and third most powerful supercomputer. [09:12] schestowitz[TR2] Also, IBM recognized that the only operating system that mattered in this space was Unix and they bought and maintained a standard Unix system and when Linux came along, they were happy to adopt that too. (They also have a Linux on Z that no one uses.) In the original architecture, "big-endian" was slightly more preferable but, over time, the processor became completely agnostic. [09:12] schestowitz[TR2] I think that those were the best days for IBM. So what happened? Let's start with the cell processor. That was an amazing machine and very difficult to program. In a very real way, it foreshadowed the world we live in today with a CPU and a GPU mining bitcoins and building an LLM AI monster. But it was not easy to program. Next, let's look at what Intel and later ARM did. They attacked in a couple of directions. First, the price to [09:12] schestowitz[TR2] performance ratio was always IBM's Achilles heel. When you have superior performance, you can ignore this problem. But somewhere between the 386 and today, the performance of these other parts became more than close enough. (I'll also mention that, as a computing device, Z cannot hold a candle to any of these. It has its strengths but raw computing power is not one.) A second major problem is the amount of (electric) power the Pow [09:12] schestowitz[TR2] er family consumes. Power consumption (and the heat generated from that consumption) mean that you cannot have a battery operated version. (Which is probably why Apple moved on.) [09:12] schestowitz[TR2] IBM does have other, more current contributions to computer science. They claim to be both AI and quantum computing leaders. But, for my money, the best thing the ever really did (in terms of computing) was the Power family. [09:12] schestowitz[TR2] 11 hours ago by Anonymous [09:12] schestowitz[TR2] | 4 reactions (+4/-0) [09:12] schestowitz[TR2] Post ID: @hwo+1tyrAur0 [09:12] schestowitz[TR2] +2 [09:12] schestowitz[TR2] You know that IBM focused on services and retained the mainframe biz bc it fit the new direction of the company. IBM worked to shed its hardware assets imagine is mass. Its was nothing like it was as a part of the "BUNCH. I know, I was there those years. [09:12] schestowitz[TR2] " [09:12] -TechBytesBot/#techbytes-NCR Voyix and NCR Atleos [09:25] schestowitz[TR2]
  • [09:25] schestowitz[TR2]
    Punch Card Hacking Exploring a Mainframe Attack Vector
    [09:25] schestowitz[TR2]
    [09:25] schestowitz[TR2]

    Most of the work carried out by a mainframe is performed through the use of jobs. A job is a unit of work, consisting of one or more steps that are executed to perform a task. Originally these jobs were defined using punch cards like the one above, today these physical cards are replaced with files written in Job Control Language (JCL). The management of these jobs and the resources they r [09:25] schestowitz[TR2] equire is handled by the Job Entry Subsystem (JES). JES receives job submissions, prioritizes them, and schedules them for execution. The execution of jobs is then coordinated by JES to ensure efficient use of system resources by allocating necessary resources and monitoring their progress. On completion, JES manages the job output for collection or distribution to the appropriate destinations.

    [09:25] schestowitz[TR2]

    Let us look at a basic job card written in JCL. The job will create a new file or, as it is described in the mainframe world, allocate a dataset. One of the first hurdles when talking about mainframes is to get handle on all the new terminology and a plethora of acronyms.

    [09:25] schestowitz[TR2]
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    • [09:25] -TechBytesBot/#techbytes-blog.nviso.eu | Punch Card Hacking Exploring a Mainframe Attack Vector NVISO Labs ● Jul 18 [11:28] *IsambardPrince has quit (connection closed) [11:51] *psydroid3 (~psydroid@j9gt2haw74jrk.irc) has joined #techbytes ● Jul 18 [14:10] *x-amarsh04 has quit (Quit: Konversation terminated!) [14:11] *x-amarsh04 (~amarsh04@4bk2ptyysukzu.irc) has joined #techbytes ● Jul 18 [19:27] *parsifal (~parsifal@6thegygyadsu4.irc) has joined #techbytes ● Jul 18 [20:12] *psydroid3 has quit (connection closed) ● Jul 18 [22:17] *Moocher5254 has quit (Quit: https://quassel-irc.org - Chat comfortably. Anywhere.) [22:19] *IsambardPrince (~isambardprince@4v769nvtshzqw.irc) has joined #techbytes [22:48] *Moocher5254 (~quassel@6i8ckjmvfhgyw.irc) has joined #techbytes [22:58] *jacobk (~quassel@h6tmdr8p4mqcy.irc) has joined #techbytes