Stand Up Maths has an interesting Youtube video about LLMs solving maths problems which I highly recommend watching (it does not require any real knowledge of maths), I think this opens the door to attacks on well established cryptologic systems [2].

Adam Conover made an insightful YouTube video about how and why Hollywood is now unable to make good sitcoms and why this is bad for society [3].

Sky Croeser wrote an interesting and insightful blog post about topics covered at the “Digital and sexual citizenship in an age of social media bans: Interrogating the rights of children and young people conference” [4].

Zane wrote a very informative blog post about reverse engineering a trojaned Android projector with Claude Code [5]. We need much better security on home networks to break the business model for this sort of thing.

Renee Stonebraker’s article “Puritans Wouldn’t Eat Pussy, So They Invented the Western” has a lot of interesting information about early days of colonising the US, and not much about eating pussy [6].

IFLScience has an interesting article about brinicles, icicles of brine that form under sea ice [7].

Nautilus has an interesting article about the Silurian Hypothesis [8].

The Conversation has an intersting article about the pros and cons of no-till farming [9].

Cold War is a 365tomorrows story about bio-warfare which raises several disturbing possibilities we need to guard against [10].

Scott Santens wrote an insightful article describing how a land value tax would reduce rent and solve the housing shortages [11].

Positive News has an interesting article about using OnlyFans to teach people about climate change [12].

The Conversation has an interesting article about cultural safety in healthcare, sounds good, and while we are at it lets deal with sexism [13].

Doctoreww has an interesting web page about ways of displaying different strings to humans and machines, this could result in you running a different command to what you thought you copied from a web site or defeating tools designed to block hostile content [14].

Cory Doctorow wrote an insightful article “Commentary Hell is Other People” about the way rich people want to use AI to replace all people [15]. Also psychologists who help rich people accept being greedy are worthy of a Luigi

The research article “Worship me at the office altar: Why narcissistic leaders resist remote work” is interesting, yet another reason to get rid of narcissistic executives [16].

Renew Economy has an interesting article about clean up costs for mining (which is usually left for the government to pay) and how this could impact renewable energy production facilities [17].

Elvira Bary wrote an insightful article on the Russian financial collapse that is happening now [18].

The Guardian has an interesting article about Afro-American women who travel to South Korea for healthcare because of problems with racism and sexism in American hospitals [19].

The Conversation has an interesting article about the potential for disabled people to be more productive in space than non-disabled people [20].

Krebs has an interesting article about LG banning residential proxy code from apps after the LG store was found to have such code in 42% of it’s apps [21].

Robert B Shpiner wrote an insightful article for The Guardian about the death of democracy in the US [22].

• [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCn7bA1eg_0
• [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJ8KThKAfbs
• [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gpSghW4J3ws
• [4] https://tinyurl.com/28b6jclu
• [5] https://zanestjohn.com/blog/reing-with-claude-code
• [6] https://tinyurl.com/2y2b6a58
• [7] https://tinyurl.com/2awjppn5
• [8] https://tinyurl.com/2y89gftt
• [9] https://tinyurl.com/2b27vo8o
• [10] https://365tomorrows.com/2024/03/27/cold-war-2/
• [11] https://tinyurl.com/2aqkn4z6
• [12] https://tinyurl.com/2dy5vy8g
• [13] https://tinyurl.com/25rld7v3
• [14] https://doctoreww.github.io/EvilFontTool/
• [15] https://tinyurl.com/2c2guu89
• [16] https://tinyurl.com/27kq4qqu
• [17] https://tinyurl.com/2blp477w
• [18] https://tinyurl.com/27aybgge
• [19] https://tinyurl.com/29covbrp
• [20] https://tinyurl.com/27qdj6co
• [21] https://tinyurl.com/22pxub8v
• [22] https://tinyurl.com/25zf4hnp

On 2026/08/10 at 2:11 am Australian eastern standard time (2026/08/09 16:11 UTC) someone created a post titled “Hacked by Chinafans” on my documents blog [1]. The person in question created an account named “67965e42a3c3” on that site with the email address 67965e42a3c3@google.com associated with it (I tried emailing that address and it bounced).

At 04:28:41am Australian eastern standard time (18:28 UTC) I was sent an email titled “Have you been hacked” by a reader of my blogs who subscribed to the RSS feed of my documents blog (a blog that I never expected anyone to read by RSS). Along the lines of “the wisdom of crowds” should we have “the unexpected observation and problem reporting of crowds”? I appreciate the notification, I might not have noticed until the next time I watched an unusually good movie otherwise.

The account in question was apparently created on 2026-07-21 at 16:43:47 (presumably UTC) even though at the time I believe creating accounts was not permitted. As an aside the timestamp of account creation is stored in the user_registered column of the wp_users table in the database, there doesn’t appear to be a way to access this in a standard WordPress installation other than doing a SQL query.

2026-07-24 15:43:17 status triggers-pending wordpress:all 7.0+dfsg1-1
2026-07-24 15:43:19 upgrade wordpress:all 7.0+dfsg1-1 7.0.2+dfsg1-1

Above are the relevant sections of my dpkg log showing the WordPress versions in use. I was running version 7.0+dfsg1-1 at the time the account was apparently created. I am confident in the accuracy of the dpkg logs and believe that they did not compromise the OS, I am not sure whether they ran hostile SQL code to change fields in the MySQL database so had to consider the possibility that the account creation time could have been set to a deliberately misleading value. I checked backups of the MySQL database stored off-site and found that the account in question was not in the 2026-07-21 backup (which was done before 16:43) but in the 2026-07-22 backup.

The WordPress release history [2] has version 7.0.1 released on 2026-07-09 and version 7.0.2 released on 2026-07-17. So presumably the attacker diffed the code on those releases, found an exploitable bug, and used it to create an account on my blog with admin privs. Then they waited a few weeks to see if I would notice and published a blog post when I didn’t notice.

WordPress Deficiencies

1. WordPress doesn’t seem to store the version it’s running at the time of operations. So anyone who doesn’t have a suitable external log of versions deployed (such as the dpkg.log file for a Debian managed installation) won’t know for sure which version was running. It supports automatic updates but you can’t be sure that they happened soon after the release.
2. There is no log of IP addresses used for operations. There are apparently some 3rd party modules to log such things and web pages documenting how to modify the PHP to add it but nothing in the standard distribution.
3. Software should have a standard distribution with some support for logging of security relevant data. The typical situation is that people don’t plan for logging such things until after they have been attacked so the data should be recorded without users going out of their way to log it.
4. A log of security relevant data should be stored in a database table with only insert access (no update, delete, or drop).
5. Ideally a CMS would support different database accounts for different purposes. Someone from an internal network or VPN could talk to an instance of the web server which has a database username and password giving full access. Everyone from outside the trusted range gets an instance of the web server with database access only allowing to read the posts and appearance configuration and to enter comments. If the database didn’t allow the account used for public access to create new admin users or create posts then it would be a lot harder for attackers.
6. Ideally for everything that stores user account data there would be an easy way of getting a list of users in a plain text format to allow running diff. The design of WordPress has two tables, one for users and one for encoded metadata about users of which one will be the access level. The following SQL command will give a list of all users that aren’t subscribers (everyone above the minimum level of access which is typical for new users) along with their encoded password and access level. This could be used in a monitoring system to alert about new privileged users. The TABLE_PREFIX variable is for the prefix for WordPress tables, which is “wp_” by default but can be any legal value.

   select $TABLE_PREFIXusers.user_login, $TABLE_PREFIXusers.user_pass, $TABLE_PREFIXusermeta.meta_value from  $TABLE_PREFIXusers join $TABLE_PREFIXusermeta on $TABLE_PREFIXusers.id = $TABLE_PREFIXusermeta.user_id and meta_key='$TABLE_PREFIXcapabilities' and meta_value != 'a:1:{s:10:"subscriber";b:1;}';

What Next?

The blog post they created had a couple of links to Telegram which could presumably be used to contact them. If anyone involved in computer security wants a copy of the original post to do so then they can contact me by any of the usual methods.

I am interested in communication with the attacker if they wish, Telegram is not a service I use but I presume that anyone capable of doing this sort of attack is also capable of finding other ways of contacting me.

I have idly considered changing to a static site generator, here is a good list of static site generators [3].

I have also idly considered other platforms for blogging such as Lemmy. I don’t know if Lemmy is better than WordPress for security and updates, but there are plenty of free instances running where it wouldn’t be an issue I have to work on.

15 Years

It’s been 15 years since my blog server was cracked by a trojaned ssh client [4]. At least this time it was only one service that was compromised.

• [1] https://doc.coker.com.au/
• [2] https://en-au.wordpress.org/download/releases/
• [3] https://jamstack.org/generators/
• [4] https://etbe.coker.com.au/2011/12/31/server-cracked/

For a while I’ve been having issues with AMD GPUs, video locking up periodically. I blogged about this late last year but I first had noticeable problems early last year [1]. The problems hadn’t only concerned my workstation but also my home server which is also used as a workstation. I’ve recently upgraded my machines to Debian/Testing, my home server has been generally OK but my workstation has been crashing a lot. Every second day when on kernel 7.1.6 and then when on 7.1.7 it crashed at least once a day.

The AMD GPUs I have are “[AMD/ATI] Baffin [Radeon RX 460/560D / Pro 450/455/460/555/555X/560/560X] (rev e5)” in my main desktop workstation, “[AMD/ATI] Lexa [Radeon 540X/550X/630 / RX 640 / E9171 MCM] (rev c1)” in my build server, and “[AMD/ATI] Baffin [Radeon RX 460/560D / Pro 450/455/460/555/555X/560/560X] (rev cf)” in my home server. They aren’t new GPUs, but also aren’t really old and they all support 4K and better resolution.

Chat GPT Was Useful

When I googled the errors I was seeing I found nothing useful. On the suggestion of a friend I tried asking ChatGPT. Generally I don’t recommend asking LLMs about such things, but it can be a last resort as long as you know what you are doing. ChatGPT asked me to run a number of commands to get information for it to make more informed decisions. I know that the output of lspci and similar commands isn’t a risk, but a novice could be tricked into running commands that expose sensitive data.

ChatGPT did give me some useful information, not a solution but an indication that the problem was due to driver bugs.

Upgrading to Experimental

Debian/Experimental is for packages that are expected to have problems and generally aren’t recommended even for the people who usually use Debian/Unstable. It’s commonly used for packages that are needed to develop other packages, EG new libraries that aren’t fully usable but which are needed to package newer versions of applications.

I upgraded my workstation to the Debian/Experimental kernel 7.2~rc7-1~exp1 after having tried every other convenient option. Generally I wouldn’t recommend that anyone run an Experimental kernel without a really good reason, but crashing more than once a day is a fairly good reason. That kernel has now given me over 4 days of uptime on a system that previously wouldn’t last a day. I installed it on my dual-socket build server that has an old AMD GPU in it for test purposes and that also hasn’t crashed since. I installed it on my ML test machine which has an Intel B580 Battlemage GPU with 16G of VRAM and was repeatedly getting a kernel panic related to the GPU a few seconds after boot and now it also works correctly.

It seems that the 7.1.x kernels have bugs in the AMD video drivers and in some part of the code that affects Intel video drivers and that the bugs in question are fixed in the tree that will become 7.2. I would not recommend anyone who has a 7.1.x kernel working fine for them try 7.2 RC kernels at this time, but anyone who has GPU related problems (particularly Intel and AMD GPUs) should definitely test it out.

I also don’t recommend upgrading any system with an AMD GPU to Debian/Testing or Debian/Unstable at this time unless you are also prepared to install an Experimental kernel if it becomes necessary.

There are a several kernel log dumps related to this after the break (which won’t be in RSS feeds). This is mainly for Google so that other people who have such issues can get more useful results out of Google searches than I got.

Future Support Options

Separate from the issue of whether commercial LLMs like ChatGPT can be useful for solving technical problems there is the issue of whether they are desirable. I think that we really don’t want people solving problems in FOSS systems with closed-source LLMs. This leads to loss of privacy, loss of the control users deserve to have over their own systems, and an implied promotion of non-fee software.

I think that the ideal would be to have a cross distribution effort to generate training data for a support LLM system which can then be further trained by each distribution for a greater emphasis on distribution specific issues.

• [1] https://etbe.coker.com.au/2025/11/09/amd-video-driver-issues/

Errors on AMD GPUs

2026-08-09T23:03:06.004792+10:00 xev kernel: amdgpu 0000:02:00.0: GPU fault detected: 147 0x00024802
2026-08-09T23:03:06.004792+10:00 xev kernel: amdgpu 0000:02:00.0: Process kscreenlocker_g pid 42037 thread kscreenloc:cs0 pid 42044
2026-08-09T23:03:06.004793+10:00 xev kernel: amdgpu 0000:02:00.0: VM_CONTEXT1_PROTECTION_FAULT_ADDR 0x00000800
2026-08-09T23:03:06.004794+10:00 xev kernel: amdgpu 0000:02:00.0: VM_CONTEXT1_PROTECTION_FAULT_STATUS 0x0F048002
2026-08-09T23:03:06.004795+10:00 xev kernel: amdgpu 0000:02:00.0: VM fault (0x02, vmid 7, pasid 130) at page 2048, write from 'TC0' (0x54433000) (72)
2026-08-09T23:03:06.008762+10:00 xev kernel: amdgpu 0000:02:00.0: GPU fault detected: 147 0x00004802
2026-08-09T23:03:06.008768+10:00 xev kernel: amdgpu 0000:02:00.0: Process kscreenlocker_g pid 42037 thread kscreenloc:cs0 pid 42044

2026-08-04T01:13:37.505839+10:00 xev kernel: ------------[ cut here ]------------ 
2026-08-04T01:13:37.505859+10:00 xev kernel: amdgpu 0000:02:00.0: [drm] drm_WARN_ON_ONCE(cur_vblank != vblank->last) 
2026-08-04T01:13:37.505862+10:00 xev kernel: WARNING: CPU: 6 PID: 210534 at drivers/gpu/drm/drm_vblank.c:362 drm_update_vblank_count+0x2f1/0x3c0 [drm] 
2026-08-04T01:13:37.505866+10:00 xev kernel: snd_intel_dspcfg wmi_bmof rc_core snd_intel_sdw_acpi drm_ttm_helper uas realtek snd_usbmidi_lib snd_hda_codec ttm mdio_devres snd_hda_core snd_seq_midi drm_kms_helper usb_storage mc snd_hwdep libphy snd_seq_midi_event intel_uncore snd_pcm_oss i2c_algo_bit serio_raw snd_rawmidi pcspkr snd_mixer_oss i2c_i801 video snd_seq snd_pcm i2c_smbus lpc_ich snd_seq_device mei_me e1000e snd_timer mei snd tpm_infineon soundcore joydev bnx2 wmi button nfsd auth_rpcgss nfs_acl lockd grace sunrpc coretemp br_netfilter bridge stp llc sg ghash_clmulni_intel loop msr i2c_dev drm efi_pstore configfs nfnetlink ip_tables x_tables autofs4 btrfs blake2b_generic dm_crypt dm_mod raid10 raid456 async_raid6_recov async_memcpy async_pq async_xor async_tx libcrc32c xor raid6_pq raid1 raid0 md_mod ext4 crc16 mbcache jbd2 crc32c_generic virtio_blk evdev hid_generic usbhid hid sd_mod xhci_pci xhci_hcd ahci ehci_pci ehci_hcd libahci crc32c_intel libata usbcore aesni_intel nvme psmouse scsi_mod gf128mul crypto_simd nvme_core cryptd 
2026-08-04T01:13:37.505879+10:00 xev kernel: nvme_auth scsi_common usb_common efivarfs 
2026-08-04T01:13:37.505880+10:00 xev kernel: CPU: 6 UID: 1008 PID: 210534 Comm: sshd-session Tainted: G D 6.12.88+deb13-amd64 #1 Debian 6.12.88-1 
2026-08-04T01:13:37.505881+10:00 xev kernel: Tainted: [D]=DIE 
2026-08-04T01:13:37.505883+10:00 xev kernel: Hardware name: Hewlett-Packard HP Z640 Workstation/212A, BIOS M60 v02.61 03/23/2023 
2026-08-04T01:13:37.505884+10:00 xev kernel: RIP: 0010:drm_update_vblank_count+0x2f1/0x3c0 [drm] 
2026-08-04T01:13:37.505885+10:00 xev kernel: Code: 48 8b 5f 50 48 85 db 75 03 48 8b 1f e8 68 eb 2b cf 48 c7 c1 70 3e cb c0 48 89 da 48 c7 c7 f9 6f cb c0 48 89 c6 e8 af d7 a6 ce <0f> 0b e9 4b fe ff ff 48 8b 4c 24 18 e9 31 fe ff ff 31 f6 48 85 db 
2026-08-04T01:13:37.505887+10:00 xev kernel: RSP: 0000:ffffd3cc8681fca0 EFLAGS: 00010082 
2026-08-04T01:13:37.505888+10:00 xev kernel: RAX: 0000000000000000 RBX: ffff8c6b42b13710 RCX: 0000000000000027 
2026-08-04T01:13:37.505889+10:00 xev kernel: RDX: ffff8c89ef521788 RSI: 0000000000000001 RDI: ffff8c89ef521780 
2026-08-04T01:13:37.505890+10:00 xev kernel: RBP: 0000000000000000 R08: 0000000000000000 R09: ffffd3cc8681fb20 
2026-08-04T01:13:37.505891+10:00 xev kernel: R10: ffff8c8a6fef3628 R11: 0000000000000003 R12: 0000000000000000 
2026-08-04T01:13:37.505892+10:00 xev kernel: R13: ffff8c6c07853828 R14: 0000000000000003 R15: 0000000000000000 
2026-08-04T01:13:37.505893+10:00 xev kernel: FS: 00007ffaf2fd5880(0000) GS:ffff8c89ef500000(0000) knlGS:0000000000000000 
2026-08-04T01:13:37.505895+10:00 xev kernel: CS: 0010 DS: 0000 ES: 0000 CR0: 0000000080050033 
2026-08-04T01:13:37.505896+10:00 xev kernel: CR2: 00007fb1718c8000 CR3: 000000074521a004 CR4: 00000000003706f0 
2026-08-04T01:13:37.505897+10:00 xev kernel: Call Trace: 
2026-08-04T01:13:37.505898+10:00 xev kernel:  
2026-08-04T01:13:37.505899+10:00 xev kernel: drm_crtc_accurate_vblank_count+0x41/0xc0 [drm] 
2026-08-04T01:13:37.505900+10:00 xev kernel: dm_pflip_high_irq+0x155/0x330 [amdgpu] 
2026-08-04T01:13:37.505901+10:00 xev kernel: amdgpu_dm_irq_handler+0x85/0x1f0 [amdgpu] 
2026-08-04T01:13:37.505902+10:00 xev kernel: amdgpu_irq_dispatch+0xd2/0x230 [amdgpu] 
2026-08-04T01:13:37.505903+10:00 xev kernel: amdgpu_ih_process+0x84/0x100 [amdgpu] 
2026-08-04T01:13:37.505904+10:00 xev kernel: amdgpu_irq_handler+0x23/0x60 [amdgpu] 
2026-08-04T01:13:37.505905+10:00 xev kernel: __handle_irq_event_percpu+0x4a/0x190
2026-08-04T01:13:37.505907+10:00 xev kernel: handle_irq_event+0x38/0x80 
2026-08-04T01:13:37.505908+10:00 xev kernel: handle_edge_irq+0x8b/0x230 
2026-08-04T01:13:37.505909+10:00 xev kernel: __common_interrupt+0x45/0xe0 
2026-08-04T01:13:37.505910+10:00 xev kernel: common_interrupt+0x42/0xa0 
2026-08-04T01:13:37.505911+10:00 xev kernel: asm_common_interrupt+0x26/0x40 
2026-08-04T01:13:37.505912+10:00 xev kernel: RIP: 0033:0x7ffaf3c5fd7b 
2026-08-04T01:13:37.505913+10:00 xev kernel: Code: 70 c7 00 66 0f 6e f8 c1 ef 02 66 0f 70 f7 e0 83 c7 01 66 0f ef ff 66 0f fa f2 0f 1f 44 00 00 f3 0f 7e 01 66 0f 6f ce 83 c6 01 <48> 83 e9 08 f2 0f 70 c0 1b 66 0f 6f e0 66 0f 6f e8 66 41 0f f9 c0 
2026-08-04T01:13:37.505915+10:00 xev kernel: RSP: 002b:00007fff86a5e0e0 EFLAGS: 00000202 
2026-08-04T01:13:37.505916+10:00 xev kernel: RAX: 0000000000008000 RBX: 0000562614a04050 RCX: 0000562614982ed8 
2026-08-04T01:13:37.505946+10:00 xev kernel: RDX: 0000000000007fe2 RSI: 0000000000000fad RDI: 0000000000002000 
2026-08-04T01:13:37.505948+10:00 xev kernel: RBP: 0000000000000000 R08: 000056261498ac40 R09: 0000000000008000 
2026-08-04T01:13:37.505949+10:00 xev kernel: R10: 0000000000000066 R11: 0000000000007fe1 R12: 0000000000007efa
2026-08-04T01:13:37.505950+10:00 xev kernel: R13: 0000000000008000 R14: 0000000000008000 R15: 000000000000ffe0 
2026-08-04T01:13:37.505951+10:00 xev kernel:  
2026-08-04T01:13:37.505953+10:00 xev kernel: ---[ end trace 0000000000000000 ]--- 
2026-08-04T01:55:40.844110+10:00 xev kernel: pcieport 0000:00:03.3: AER: Multiple Correctable error message received from 0000:00:03.3 
2026-08-04T01:55:40.844130+10:00 xev kernel: pcieport 0000:00:03.3: PCIe Bus Error: severity=Correctable, type=Data Link Layer, (Receiver ID) 
2026-08-04T01:55:40.844132+10:00 xev kernel: pcieport 0000:00:03.3: device [8086:6f0b] error status/mask=00000040/00002000 
2026-08-04T01:55:40.844134+10:00 xev kernel: pcieport 0000:00:03.3: [ 6] BadTLP

2026-08-11T09:33:33.473855+10:00 xev kernel: amdgpu 0000:02:00.0: GPU fault detected: 147 0x00024802
2026-08-11T09:33:33.473871+10:00 xev kernel: amdgpu 0000:02:00.0: Process kscreenlocker_g pid 150905 thread kscreenloc:cs0 pid 150912
2026-08-11T09:33:33.473871+10:00 xev kernel: amdgpu 0000:02:00.0: VM_CONTEXT1_PROTECTION_FAULT_ADDR 0x00000800
2026-08-11T09:33:33.473873+10:00 xev kernel: amdgpu 0000:02:00.0: VM_CONTEXT1_PROTECTION_FAULT_STATUS 0x0F048002
2026-08-11T09:33:33.473873+10:00 xev kernel: amdgpu 0000:02:00.0: VM fault (0x02, vmid 7, pasid 63) at page 2048, write from 'TC0' (0x54433000) (72)
2026-08-11T09:33:33.473874+10:00 xev kernel: amdgpu 0000:02:00.0: GPU fault detected: 147 0x00004802
2026-08-11T09:33:33.473874+10:00 xev kernel: amdgpu 0000:02:00.0: Process kscreenlocker_g pid 150905 thread kscreenloc:cs0 pid 150912
2026-08-11T09:33:33.473875+10:00 xev kernel: amdgpu 0000:02:00.0: VM_CONTEXT1_PROTECTION_FAULT_ADDR 0x00000800
2026-08-11T09:33:33.473876+10:00 xev kernel: amdgpu 0000:02:00.0: VM_CONTEXT1_PROTECTION_FAULT_STATUS 0x0E048002
2026-08-11T09:33:33.473876+10:00 xev kernel: amdgpu 0000:02:00.0: VM fault (0x02, vmid 7, pasid 63) at page 2048, read from 'TC0' (0x54433000) (72)
2026-08-11T09:33:35.481863+10:00 xev kernel: amdgpu 0000:02:00.0: Dumping IP State
2026-08-11T09:33:35.481875+10:00 xev kernel: amdgpu 0000:02:00.0: Dumping IP State Completed
2026-08-11T09:33:35.481875+10:00 xev kernel: amdgpu 0000:02:00.0: [drm] AMDGPU device coredump file has been created
2026-08-11T09:33:35.481876+10:00 xev kernel: amdgpu 0000:02:00.0: [drm] Check your /sys/class/drm/card0/device/devcoredump/data
2026-08-11T09:33:35.481877+10:00 xev kernel: amdgpu 0000:02:00.0: GPU fault detected: 146 0x0110040c
2026-08-11T09:33:35.481877+10:00 xev kernel: amdgpu 0000:02:00.0: Process kscreenlocker_g pid 150905 thread kscreenloc:cs0 pid 150912
2026-08-11T09:33:35.481878+10:00 xev kernel: amdgpu 0000:02:00.0: VM_CONTEXT1_PROTECTION_FAULT_ADDR 0x00000022
2026-08-11T09:33:35.481879+10:00 xev kernel: amdgpu 0000:02:00.0: VM_CONTEXT1_PROTECTION_FAULT_STATUS 0x0E00400C
2026-08-11T09:33:35.481879+10:00 xev kernel: amdgpu 0000:02:00.0: VM fault (0x0c, vmid 7, pasid 63) at page 34, read from 'TC3' (0x54433300) (4)
2026-08-11T09:33:35.489845+10:00 xev kernel: amdgpu 0000:02:00.0: ring gfx timeout, signaled seq=5123619, emitted seq=5123621
2026-08-11T09:33:35.489853+10:00 xev kernel: amdgpu 0000:02:00.0: Process kscreenlocker_g pid 150905 thread kscreenloc:cs0 pid 150912
2026-08-11T09:33:35.489854+10:00 xev kernel: amdgpu 0000:02:00.0: GPU reset begin!. Source: 1
2026-08-11T09:33:35.493839+10:00 xev kernel: amdgpu 0000:02:00.0: [drm] ERROR Failed to initialize parser -125!
2026-08-11T09:33:35.737848+10:00 xev kernel: amdgpu: cp is busy, skip halt cp
2026-08-11T09:33:35.897842+10:00 xev kernel: amdgpu: rlc is busy, skip halt rlc
2026-08-11T09:33:35.897852+10:00 xev kernel: amdgpu 0000:02:00.0: BACO reset
2026-08-11T09:33:36.485849+10:00 xev kernel: amdgpu 0000:02:00.0: GPU reset succeeded, trying to resume
2026-08-11T09:33:36.485859+10:00 xev kernel: amdgpu 0000:02:00.0: [drm] PCIE GART of 256M enabled (table at 0x000000F402000000).
2026-08-11T09:33:36.485860+10:00 xev kernel: amdgpu 0000:02:00.0: VRAM is lost due to GPU reset!

Errors on Battlemage

Aug 11 17:01:47 ami kernel: ------------[ cut here ]------------
Aug 11 17:01:47 ami kernel: xe 0000:23:00.0: [drm] DMC 1 mmio[0]/0x5f074 incorrect (expected 0x96fc0, current 0x0)
Aug 11 17:01:47 ami kernel: WARNING: drivers/gpu/drm/i915/display/intel_dmc.c:696 at assert_dmc_loaded+0x275/0x430 [xe], CPU#0: kworker/0:3/215
Aug 11 17:01:47 ami kernel: Modules linked in: intel_rapl_msr intel_rapl_common intel_uncore_frequency intel_uncore_frequency_common xe(+) skx_edac snd_h>
Aug 11 17:01:47 ami kernel:  msr i2c_dev configfs efi_pstore efivarfs autofs4 btrfs libblake2b raid6_pq xor mpt3sas raid_class scsi_transport_sas megarai>
Aug 11 17:01:47 ami kernel: CPU: 0 UID: 0 PID: 215 Comm: kworker/0:3 Not tainted 7.1.7+deb14-amd64 #1 PREEMPT(lazy)  Debian 7.1.7-1 
Aug 11 17:01:47 ami kernel: Hardware name: HP HP Z4 G4 Workstation/81C5, BIOS P61 v03.00 04/15/2026
Aug 11 17:01:47 ami kernel: Workqueue: sync_wq local_pci_probe_callback
Aug 11 17:01:47 ami kernel: RIP: 0010:assert_dmc_loaded+0x291/0x430 [xe]
Aug 11 17:01:47 ami kernel: Code: 24 10 e8 f2 e5 a3 ce 48 8d 3d bb 85 0d 00 8b 54 24 0c 45 89 e9 45 89 e0 48 89 c6 52 8b 4c 24 2c 51 8b 4c 24 30 48 8b 54>
Aug 11 17:01:47 ami kernel: RSP: 0018:ffffd27ac0b87b80 EFLAGS: 00010282
Aug 11 17:01:47 ami kernel: RAX: ffffffffc1743dfd RBX: ffff8c5b80e54000 RCX: 0000000000000001
Aug 11 17:01:47 ami kernel: RDX: ffff8c5b81df5a10 RSI: ffffffffc1743dfd RDI: ffffffffc1605860
Aug 11 17:01:47 ami kernel: RBP: ffff8c5b86955000 R08: 0000000000000000 R09: 000000000005f074
Aug 11 17:01:47 ami kernel: R10: 0000000000000000 R11: 0000000000091050 R12: 0000000000000000
Aug 11 17:01:47 ami kernel: R13: 000000000005f074 R14: 0000000000000001 R15: 0000000000000000
Aug 11 17:01:47 ami kernel: FS:  0000000000000000(0000) GS:ffff8c673e172000(0000) knlGS:0000000000000000
Aug 11 17:01:47 ami kernel: CS:  0010 DS: 0000 ES: 0000 CR0: 0000000080050033
Aug 11 17:01:47 ami kernel: CR2: 00007ffed1fdcd00 CR3: 0000000ae942a003 CR4: 00000000003706f0
Aug 11 17:01:47 ami kernel: Call Trace:
Aug 11 17:01:47 ami kernel:  
Aug 11 17:01:47 ami kernel:  intel_dmc_enable_pipe+0xe4/0x290 [xe]
Aug 11 17:01:47 ami kernel:  ? drm_crtc_vblank_reset+0x4d/0x120 [drm]
Aug 11 17:01:47 ami kernel:  intel_modeset_setup_hw_state+0xb50/0x1e10 [xe]
Aug 11 17:01:47 ami kernel:  ? intel_display_driver_probe_nogem+0x138/0x1a0 [xe]
Aug 11 17:01:47 ami kernel:  intel_display_driver_probe_nogem+0x138/0x1a0 [xe]
Aug 11 17:01:47 ami kernel:  xe_display_init_early+0xb2/0x140 [xe]
Aug 11 17:01:47 ami kernel:  xe_device_probe+0x3c8/0xb50 [xe]
Aug 11 17:01:47 ami kernel:  ? xe_pm_init_early+0x152/0x160 [xe]
Aug 11 17:01:47 ami kernel:  xe_pci_probe+0xc26/0x1150 [xe]
Aug 11 17:01:47 ami kernel:  local_pci_probe+0x3e/0x90
Aug 11 17:01:47 ami kernel:  local_pci_probe_callback+0x16/0x20
Aug 11 17:01:47 ami kernel:  process_one_work+0x19d/0x3a0
Aug 11 17:01:47 ami kernel:  worker_thread+0x1af/0x320
Aug 11 17:01:47 ami kernel:  ? __pfx_worker_thread+0x10/0x10
Aug 11 17:01:47 ami kernel:  kthread+0xe3/0x120
Aug 11 17:01:47 ami kernel:  ? __pfx_kthread+0x10/0x10
Aug 11 17:01:47 ami kernel:  ret_from_fork+0x2b2/0x340
Aug 11 17:01:47 ami kernel:  ? __pfx_kthread+0x10/0x10
Aug 11 17:01:47 ami kernel:  ret_from_fork_asm+0x1a/0x30
Aug 11 17:01:47 ami kernel:  
Aug 11 17:01:47 ami kernel: ---[ end trace 0000000000000000 ]---

The first issue I raised was “Now it’s not uncommon to have separate remote controls for the TV, VCR, DVD player, and the Cable TV box – a total of four remote controls” which seems to have alleviated. VCRs seem to have almost entirely gone away. The VHS Wikipedia page [2] is worth reading for everyone who hasn’t seen a VCR in operation, which I expect to be more than a few readers now and an increasing number over the next 18 years. I personally don’t have Cable TV, I own a DVD player which isn’t connected to my TV because I haven’t used it for years, I don’t own a VCR, and I don’t watch free to air TV. So I have one remote control for the TV which I use for Netflix and sometimes YouTube.

When viewing YouTube on TV there are significantly more adverts and longer adverts. I presume that is because installing an ad-blocker on my TV isn’t a viable option for me and it’s a total impossibility for most users. Generally my desktop PC is a much better platform for YouTube than my TV, it has a better quality display, is more user friendly (my previous post addressed the difficulty of getting to the data source that’s desired), and doesn’t require entering search terms via a slow on-screen keyboard. Netflix on Linux is limited to 720p at low bitrate which is obviously of low visual quality while on the TV it’s in 4K. I have Netflix so I use that only on the TV.

In my previous post I wrote a thought experiment on how to use a cheap laptop ($500 at the time – equivalent to $777 in 2025 money according to the Reserve Bank of Australia) to control a $5000 TV ($7770 in 2025 money). Now you can buy a new 65″ 4K TV for under $800 and a new laptop capable of 4K output for under $400 so the options are very different. For a $800 TV the manufacturer isn’t going to develop a remote control interface and Google (who develops the software the TVs run) won’t do it because it could reduce their advertising revenue. But a typical home user could setup a cheap laptop connected to their TV via HDMI providing a familiar and efficient user interface for themselves and visitors. For a Windows laptop 4K Netflix should work and for a Linux laptop the options of a laptop for everything apart from Netflix and the TV for Netflix are bearable, two controls are worse than one but better than the 3+ that used to be common.

In my previous post I raised the issue that “it’s often the case that you don’t want to stop watching one show while trying to find another”. This is still an unsolved problem and is not addressed in modern software. I am not aware of a Linux music player that supports such functionality and this would be much easier for a music player than for a video player where the screen would have to be shared between the interface for finding the next thing to play and the space for playing the end of the current one. Maybe I should file a bunch of wishlist bugs against music players asking for this.

I suggested that “cable modem” and “cable TV box” could be integrated into a single device. That has not happened, in fact it’s got worse. A relative who has Foxtel has a cable modem, a cable TV box, and a Wifi AP with VOIP to provide landline phone service and to make it more exciting the latter two both have bugs that require a periodic hardware reset to fix. Hopefully cable TV will go away in the next 18 years.

Regular PCs have become less noisy in recent years. I am currently using a HP Z640 to write this post and I have HP Z840 and HP Z4G4 systems behind me running as servers and the background noise is still very low. The allegedly 8K TV [3] that I have in my lounge room has cooling fans that make more noise than those three high-end HP computers combined. Using a quiet PC like one of those HP systems to drive a TV is a very viable option and I did just that for a couple of years. Kogan has currently got a selection of refurbished Lenovo ThinkStation systems on sale for under $400, they are quiet and would do well for this, it’s also nice that Kogan is selling systems with ECC RAM at home user prices.

TV does seem to be going away. YouTube and streaming services seem to get more watching time and many people don’t use TV at all.

Since my previous post the number of streaming services has increased so torrenting offers increasing benefits as no-one wants to subscribe to 6+ services. For anyone who wants to get all the content that interests them while paying the user interface situation is much worse now than it used to be in 2008.

If you use KDE on a PC then the kconnect program allows a phone to be used to remotely control some aspects of a PC and has a good interface for pause/resume of a video and seeking 10 seconds forwards/backwards. The interface for controlling volume is hard to get to and doesn’t work on my installation. If you want to use a keyboard to start something playing and then a phone for pause control then kdeconnect is a decent option. A comment on my previous post by Michael Croes raised the issue of remote control which is now a solvable problem. Justin also wrote a comment suggesting a Nokia N800 as a remote.

Jason suggested a programmable remote, which would be a good option for a power user and a viable option for someone setting things up for their grandparents. But the amount of pain is greater than I’m interested in as lounge room TV isn’t an important thing to me. It may appeal to more people than having a dedicated lounge room PC though.

• [1] https://etbe.coker.com.au/2008/09/15/the-problem-is-too-many-remote-controls/
• [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VHS
• [3] https://etbe.coker.com.au/2025/11/25/edid-and-my-8k-tv/

Some time ago I worked in the IT department of a company that had a corporate standard of two 27″ FUllHD (either 1920*1080 or 1920*1200) monitors for the desktop. I was pushing to make the standard be one 32″ 4K monitor or the two cheaper monitors. They ended up making one 27″ 4K monitor an option which was still a better option for many users than two FullHD monitors due to having twice the pixels even though it had half the screen area. It was a surprise to me when hardly anyone took up that option.

One man who worked there brought a wide curved monitor from home and ran with one of the FullHD monitors on each side of that. As an employee in the IT department I had concerns about expensive personal equipment being used in the office regarding who’s going to pay the bill if it gets broken. But I was assured that it was his old monitor that he didn’t need after buying a better one for gaming at home and he wouldn’t be too upset if something happened to it.

This isn’t the only time I’ve witnessed such problems of companies paying large salaries for skilled people and providing poor equipment for them to do the work. One previous time I raised a OH&S issue because the outdated monitors were so blurry but the company determined that the monitors wouldn’t cause health problems and spending $150 per employee on better replacements was a waste of money.

Computer hardware tends to become cheaper over time and one thing that has become really cheap recently is portable monitors. Kogan has a 15.6″ FullHD monitor with USB-C and mini-HDMI inputs for $89 [1]. It wouldn’t be difficult for someone to put one of those on each side of the monitor or monitors that their employer provides and put them in a desk drawer at the end of the day to minimise risk. The same Kogan page has a 16″ monitor with 2560*1600 resolution for $189.

Company Ownership

I previously wrote about the potential benefits to companies in not owning all those keyboards, mice, and headsets when they could just give each employee the money and have them buy their own [2]. I don’t think we are at the stage where that can be applied to monitors as the cheapest price for a decent monitor is about $500 which takes it out of the disposable price range that keyboards and mice are in. Also from an IT support perspective there are real support issues with monitors and cables having compatibility issues. But paying small amounts of money to reimburse employees who buy cheap portable monitors to supplement their main monitor is a more reasonable option. For some people that will allow noteworthy improvements in work performance.

Who Will it Help?

I don’t think that adding such portable monitors will directly help the majority of workers. I think that to maximise performance and efficiency we need to chase the long tail of improvements. Big monitors, really big monitors (65″ at a larger distance), multiple monitors, standing desks, and whatever else people want.

There was some research from Microsoft some years ago (back when 27″ was a really big monitor) showing that some tasks had a 50% increase in performance with a larger monitor. Now that 27″ is about the smallest monitor size commonly available the potential for improvement is reduced. Probably most workers now already have monitors that provide the benefits to them that the “big monitors” in Microsoft research provided. But there will always be some portion of the user base who will benefit. If you can get a 50% performance boost for 1% of the users that’s really worth doing. If you can get a 0.5% benefit for 100% of the users that is also worth doing and will theoretically give equal benefits.

Costs of Employees

It is claimed that the total cost of an employee including all overheads of management and providing office facilities etc amounts to twice their base salary. If that is the case then a minimum wage employee in Australia costs $100k per year, someone at the low end of the IT pay scale costs $200k, and someone at the high end of the IT scale is around $400k. It seems clearly worthwhile to spend $1000 in hardware purchases for a $100k employee who declares that it will really help their work, anything which is noticeable to the user is going to be more than a 1% difference in performance.

For someone at the high end of the IT pay scale spending $40,000 on hardware to improve their performance could pay for itself. This is not only due to direct return on investment but because the people who do such work are often in key roles in important projects. If there’s too much work for one person on minimum wage to do then you just hire another person. You can’t hire another senior IT person and have them just do the work, it can take months to get up to speed.

But as management in corporations seems unable to recognise this cheap hardware employees can afford to buy with their own money can bridge the gap.

Job Interviews

In future when interviewing for jobs I’ll ask about the hardware that’s to be used. I won’t say “I’m not interested in this job offer because you don’t respect your employees enough to buy adequate hardware”, but I may make it a condition of working at a company that the hardware on my desk will not be obsolete.

• [1] https://tinyurl.com/26bdng24
• [2] https://etbe.coker.com.au/2023/06/22/cheap-peripherals-work/

$ ./packet_edit_meme 
[*] target /bin/su as uid 1000; entry at file offset 0x4340; shellcode 48 bytes
unshare: Permission denied
[-] page-cache corruption failed

Here is the audit log entry for this failure:

type=AVC msg=audit(1785640621.498:1843): avc:  denied  { create } for  pid=1770 comm="packet_edit_mem" scontext=user_u:user_r:user_t:s0 tcontext=user_u:user_r:user_t:s0 tclass=user_namespace permissive=0

Here’s the result of running it from the unconfined_t domain:

$ ./packet_edit_meme 
[*] target /bin/su as uid 1001; entry at file offset 0x4340; shellcode 48 bytes
[+] su entry overwritten; exec'ing su -> interactive root shell
# id
uid=0(root) gid=0(root) groups=0(root),1001(test2) context=unconfined_u:unconfined_r:unconfined_t:s0-s0:c0.c1023
# 

Daniel Baumann wrote a blog post describing how this is fixed for Debian systems without SE Linux.