Posts by Flocke Kroes

How experimental was Microsoft's 'experimental banner' in File Explorer?

Why is easy

Because almost everyone capable of switching to Linux already has. The remaining customers are already securely tied over a barrel. Microsoft can do whatever they want and only a miniscule proportion of their victims will break free.

So you are saying ...

... successful computing professionals choose FOSS because it scales, it works and it is cheaper.

Microsoft used to say that malware slingers used FOSS. What IT purchasers heard was "professionals skilled in IT security choose FOSS".

If software does not do what I want my choices are:

FOSS) Fix it myself or hire a programmer at a competitive rate to fix it.

Proprietary) Beg the monopoly supplier to fix it. Buy the next version and hope the fix is included and new breakages aren't.

Perhaps the worst advertisers of the world are not entirely dim.

Salesforce sued in attempt to block release of Capitol riot info

Re: Buttery males - use your own server

Elephants are grey. My car is grey, therefore my car is an elephant.

Deplorables have joined the Republican party. ??? is a Republican, therefore ??? is deplorable.

Republican communicators are good at taking quotes so far out of context that they make no logical sense and Republican voters are really bad at spotting logical fallacies. It did not matter what Hillary said. They would have found some way to turn it around - no matter how daft. For example many Republicans actually believe Al Gore claimed to have invented the internet.

Hillary's email server was not illegal at the time. It was against State department policy and for that she deserved a scolding and a slapped wrist from the Secretary of State (herself). The emails were almost all found and recovered from computers they were sent to. Despite the best efforts of the RNC there was nothing in the emails that showed anything illegal. GWB43 was illegal and the destruction of hundreds of thousands of emails that went through that server during the run up to Iraq war V2 was illegal.

Hillary made many mistakes when running for the 2016 presidency. Fairly high up was being a loud critic of Putin. Russia as a gun manufacturer is a major contributor to the NRA which can make campaign contributions which Putin could not do directly. The most obvious mistake was not including the Trump campaign's "get out the vote" software. This was an area where the Republicans had previously been hilariously incompetent and Donnie wasn't going to waste any of his hard earned campaign contributions on that. Robert Mercer provided high quality "get out the vote" software that no-one saw coming. This meant the polls were off by 6% and Hillary spend the final weeks campaigning in safe Trump states instead of the marginals.

Hillary earned an end of her career by losing to Donald but not for using her own email server - which was a response to the proper tools of the time not being made available to her. "But her emails" was a common "joke" aimed at Republicans every time Donald did something ridiculously stupid and harmful between 2016 and 2020.

Buttery males

I thought the RNC understood this from last time. If you like to send incriminating emails, use your own server.

OpenZFS 2.1.3 bugfix brings compatibility with Linux 5.16

Re: We're absolutely firm on this

The patent licence can be voided without changing the CDDL. For the patent license to be valid you must not change any of the code that implements any of the patents. If a need to change such code does not turn up on its own Oracle can create the need by adding a feature that requires such a change. You then have the choice of voiding the patent license or becoming incompatible. You already have the burden of checking any changes against the patents. Microsoft use pretty much the same trap for anyone brave enough to implement their standards.

Re: We're absolutely firm on this

It is not about extremism, purity or absolutism. Firstly it is about "will I get sued" and if the answer to that is a definite no then it is about the copyright holder's intent. CDDL contains a patent license that Oracle can void with a small amount of effort. That alone is enough for me to avoid it. Back when Sun was choosing a license they deliberately chose to base CDDL on a license with GPL incompatibility. I respect their choice.

Over the years it has become clear that different people in Sun had different intentions. As far as I can make out, some people who are not the deciding authority say that mixing CDDL and GPL does not violate CDDL but people who really should know what they are talking about say that mixing CDDL and GPL violates GPL. That by itself is sufficient for me to avoid a mixed work.

There is wiggle room for argument. I do not want to have that argument in court with Oracle's lawyers. Oracle could make things clear by either releasing their code under GPL or stating clearly that their code is not to be mixed with GPL code. My personal interpretation of their decision to keep things vague is they want people to create derivative works without giving permission so that if there is ever enough money involved they can sue.

I do not know if Larry needs a bigger yacht than Jeff but I see no reason to risk contributing to one.

Reg reader rages over Virgin Media's email password policy

Re-enabling paste

This is how to re-enable paste in Firefox. For other browsers, ask duckduckgo.

Why Nvidia sees a future in software and services: Recurring revenue

Things / Ideas

Things can be bought. Ideas are licensed. Cars are things with software. In the past, you could buy a car and the car came with a license for the software. The software license could be transferred by selling the car. The camel is already half way in the tent: Some cars already have some software with a license that does not transfer with the sale of the vehicle, for example Tesla's "full self driving" (deleted huge rant about the misleading name).

A car manufacturer can legally license software as free for the first year followed by a monthly fee. I would like to think most people would read the small print and buy something else. In the real world most people make disappointing purchase decisions.

GlobalFoundries' new silicon photonics tech gets big buy-in

Re: I don't understand any of this but...

The speed of light changes with the material is travels through. The speed of electrical signals is ... the same as the speed of light in the insulator separating the conductors. Either way, the maximum speed is when the material is a vacuum. (The speed of light in air is almost as fast as in vacuum.)

The big selling point here is not the signal speed but the data rate. It is easier to get more bits per second along an optical fibre than along a pair of wires. The plan is to replace many pairs of wires with a single optical fibre.

All this "data at the speed of light" stuff is marketing gibberish to impress PHBs.

Microsoft 365, Office 365 price hikes delayed

Sparato must be very thankful for libre office

Spataro tried to justify the price hikes by pointing to the extra features customers had been lavished with.

By itself, bundling unwanted software is not illegal but when a monopoly does forces purchases of unwanted goods with their unique product the EU will fine them many millions a decade later.

Chinese rocket junk may have just smashed into Moon

Gray argued that scientists should start paying attention to junk further out into space: "Many more spacecraft are now going into high orbits, and some of them will be taking crews to the Moon," he said. "Such junk will no longer be merely an annoyance to a small group of astronomers."

Someone at the US Space Force has been paying attention. They plan to extend their monitoring from geostationary to the Moon.

OneWeb drops launches from Russia's Baikonur spaceport

Re: (eventual) refund?

Rogozin made demands because he knows there are no future customers to lose.

Re: (eventual) refund?

OneWeb hired Boeing to make the satellites. Part of the contract was that OneWeb had to buy launches from Boeing. Pre Starlink, the satellite costs might have been reasonable but post Starlink the satellites are overpriced or under featured. That is half of what drove OneWeb bankrupt. The other half is Boeing ignored the cheapest launch provider (SpaceX) and negotiated a really good bulk price from Roscosmos. Boeing then charged OneWeb Roscosmos's full retail price for each launch.

Roscosmos spent lots of money half building rockets for the OneWeb contract then OneWeb went bankrupt leaving Roscosmos with lots of value stranded in rockets it could not sell. Luckily the UK government came to their rescue. If things went the same way as before, Roscosmos has taken Boeing's deposit and fees for previous launches but will not be getting money for future launches. In theory, Boeing is owed money or launches but has not way to collect.

Perhaps Boeing owes OneWeb money or launches but judging by OneWeb's negotiating skills I would not bet on it. If the UK government renegotiated the deal then I am certain UK tax payers now owe Boeing money.

If you have a good product you sell it to people. If you have a bad product you sell it to businesses. If your product is completely FUBAR you get a government to mandate its use. OneWeb was not competitive with SpaceX so there is no chance of retail sales. They may still get somewhere with a tiny numer of commercial customers if there are any who can make good use of the partial constellation. At this time OneWeb really needs a government mandate.

Boeing could offer launch on ULA's Vulcan. Boeing owns 50% of ULA and would like to close that deal but Vulcan will use Blue Origin's BE-4 engine - if Blue ever delivers (Try an image search for "Where are my engines Jeff?"). If OneWeb cannot or will not buy launches from SpaceX the next options are China and India - but only if they can get that past Boeing. India's GSLV2 is a bit small but Bharti Global owns half of OneWeb so it may go that way. Blue Origin still talks about launching this year but I am not sure how a litigation company can put anything in orbit especially when New Glenn is supposed to use BE-4 engines.

A Snapdragon in a ThinkPad: Lenovo unveils the X13s

Re: Microsoft Pluton

Pluton is not the (only) problem. The CPU is from Qualcomm. I expect support to disappear in the same amount of time it takes Qualcomm to end support of Android phone CPUs.

Apple seeks patent for 'innovation' resembling the ZX Spectrum, C64 and rPi 400

Re: No CPU heat sink

I just checked a photo of the board. Even the voltage regulator did not have a separate heat sink - just a big patch of copper on the PCB.

You have missed the entire purpose of a patent. There is no point patenting anything original as there would be no-one to sue. A patent only has value if it is so obvious that lots of people are already infringing it.

The actual features at issue were: glass to the edge of the device (that only Samsung could manufacture at the time), four columns of icons (to match the number of fingers on most hands) and Steve's most astonishing invention - the colour black.

Re: 1980s

And 70s: Ohio Superboard, Nascom, Commodore PET and ITT 2020. (If you really want to wind up the most extreme Apple fanboys: the Xerox Alto.)

Your app deleted all my files. And my wallpaper too!

Re: Clearly someone who understands ...

Whether they admit it or not, most people use the "Now or Never" filing system to organise their projects. The system is workable - as long as you do not convince your self that you are using some more complicated priority based system.

["Just do it" themed clothing is popular at my gym. One young lady has an excellent hoodie with "Just do it later".]

Mobile-based ID wallets for government are coming

Re: Not good.

Last time I checked... you are not required to have your driving license with you even when driving but you may be required to go to a police station with your license with 24 hours if a policeman decides there is a problem with the way you drive.

I thoroughly agree with you that using a mobile phone for anything that requires security is completely insane. About the only more stupid idea I could dream up would be to use blockchain - oh wait: Gartner beat me to it.

If the article had said something about the government allowing authentication with FIDO2 I would have wondered what had happened to the rest of February and the whole of March. There is no way I would believe such sanity from our politicians as the OMRLP have clearly held the majority for decades.

Americans far more willing to hand over personal data

Re: @nematoad

As you want a better life, try the survey:

Would you tick "like" and "dislike" buttons so I can select news for you that you like? (Eg: presented in a style that matches your confirmation bias until you trust my news to the point of buying ivermectin for COVID.)

Would you give me access to details of your income and expenditure so I can list products at great prices? (Eg: match my prices to what I decide you can afford.)

Would you give me your bank details in return for a better life? (Eg: I get the better life.)

I can place a fictional carrot in the direction I want you to answer the survey. You can answer everything the way I want but that does not lead you to a real carrot.

PC OEMs are sitting on 10 weeks-plus of DRAM, says Trendforce

Re: Moan Time

Use cases are subjective. To me, a Windows license has negative value, standard software comes with any mainstream Linux distribution and the system only needs to be fast enough. The huge step up in performance that comes with Intel/AMD/nVidia has far less value to me than the cost. Other people have different priorities.

File suffixes: Who needs them? Well, this guy did

Re: Still humans in the mix here not just machines

OK I could type 'file *' but 'ls' is easier to type and the output is easier to read.

IBM looked to reinvigorate its 'dated maternal workforce'

Bankers comparing sizes...

US Banker: Our staff work more hours than yours.

UK Banker: Our staff bring in more money than yours.

I can understand paying some attention to age if a significant proportion of the workforce will retire in the same year. What really matters is achievement and if IBM manglement are optimising for age instead then they are making determined progress on their path to irrelevance.

Geomagnetic storm takes out 40 of 49 brand new Starlink satellites

Re: Cost

$62M for ride in a shiny new Falcon 9 that is recovered at sea. Used to be $50 for a slighty sooty ride. There is a discount for buying in bulk. The internal cost is believed to be about $20M. There are additional costs for things like payload integration and adding propellant to the satellites.

Re: Skynet

The actual figures were 40/49. All the other satellites had already raised their orbit and were in no danger from Earth's atmosphere being kicked up by a coronal mass ejection.

What would make a difference is launching with a Starship instead of a Falcon 9. More satellites on each launch and rumours are that the satellites will be bigger and heavier. That future generation of satellite may be more or less susceptible depending on whether size or mass increases fastest.

NASA taps Lockheed Martin to build Mars parcel pickup rocket

Re: Cheaper?

Musk's goal is to make humans a multi-planet species. The cars are partly a technological stepping stone to that goal and partly a financial stepping stone. Reality often causes Musk to change the route but not the destination. Hence the lack of battery exchange. The self-driving thing is an embarrassment. The problem is way harder then he expected. I do not know if he has admitted this to himself but he should certainly admit it publicly to get customers' expectations closer to reality before they read a book while the car drives itself hard into the back of a stopped ambulance. Self driving cars on Earth are not a requirement for colonising Mars so that will not get Musk's full attention. Self driving construction equipment on Mars is a valuable tool for colonisation and such equipment will not have the opportunity to crash into the back of an ambulance for decades.

Putting astronauts on a Starship is a requirement for colonising Mars so it will happen - eventually. Uncrewed Starships will have to land many times before they are considered safe enough for people.

Getting a Starship back from Mars by sending fuel from Earth it technically possible but expensive. You end up with a fleet of expensive empty tankers in Mars orbit. This is achievement is not required for colonising Mars so Musk will not do it unless NASA offers silly money like for Artemis.

Making fuel on Mars is a requirement for colonisation so Musk will make it happen - several years behind schedule.

Starships will bring rocks back from Mars but I doubt they will bring them back from Perseverance - unless Lockheed Martin take lessons in project management from Boeing.

Re: What, Bezos didn't sent a proposal?

Jeff doesn't need to submit a proposal. Blue is a litigation company and can simply sue NASA for not selecting them without going to the trouble of developing any rockets capable of getting to orbit let alone Mars.

Ice mining

To get back to Earth a Starship has to land (and probably devastate) an unprepared area of Mars, deploy lots of solar panels, ice mining and fuel processing equipment. Although solar panels work better near the equator the ice mining equipment needs to be much nearer one of the poles than Perseverance. The good news is that the rock storm caused by a Starship landing (or lift-off) will be a easily far enough away from Perseverance but it will be a very long walk to collect the samples.

This could be solved with a solar powered helicopter (or a flock of them if reliability is a concern) but does not address one of the key requirements of US space exploration. Certain contractors have bi-partisan support and will get funding because they spread huge amounts of money over many different states. SpaceX does not waste anything like enough money.

Taekwindow: Time to make your middle mouse button earn its keep

Finally!

Windows is ready for the desktop!

Jeff Bezos adds some more overheads to his $485m yacht by taking down historic bridge

Re: Bezos 2nd yacht

His second yacht is already under construction. The masts on the first one prevent landing a helicopter so he needs another one with a helipad. A bit silly really as Jacklyn should be big enough for a really big luxury super-helicopter.

50 lines of Bash to bring a Wordle fan out of their shell

Re: Prior art?

The artwork, music and software are protectable with copyright. The game mechanics might be copyrightable but if that is possible then the rights belong to the creator of the word variant of mastermind from decades ago.

Prior art is a term from patent law. I have no idea if game mechanics can be patented. Depending on jurisdiction, the prior art may not be a problem: some jurisdictions specifically legalise ripping off other people's ideas if they go with "first to file a patent". Other jurisdictions go with "first to invent" so a patent can be ruled invalid with prior art and a large pile of money.

Software is a branch of mathematics so it is not patentable subject matter according to WIPO. The implementation is protected by copyright but not the idea. In theory someone can legally create their own implementation and distribute it. Patent offices are skilled in ignoring patent treaties and will grant patents for the idea for some software. In the EU you have to call a software patent a "computer implemented invention" in the filing but you don't even need to pretend in the US. Although software computer implemented invention patents are granted they may or may not be valid. That does not matter at all as the cost of litigation convinces many defendants to settle without a fight.

New York Times outlays seven-figure sum for 1,900 lines of JavaScript – yes, we mean Wordle

Re: Got an example?

Your scorer does not generate the same results as the one in wordle.

I would expect great, great -> GGG_G

As tested: light, dilly -> _Gy__

(This one caught me out as an ealier version of my scorer gave: light, dilly -> _G_y_)

I changed my solver to use the dictionary from wordle and it failed because none of the answers are in the dictionary. The ideal dictionary to use is the wordle answer list combined with the wordle dictionary giving 12971 words.

Got an example?

Word: katrna. Guess: katrnb. Score: GGGG_.

Word: katrna. Guess: katrnk. Score: GGGG_. Because word does not contain two k's

Word: katrna. Guess: katrna. Score: GGGGG. Because there is no wrong place for the fifth letter when the first four are green.

Re: Does not have to be a time sink

Finding the best word is not an O(N) string search.

Step one is to trim the dictionary to words that match the scores from previous guesses. For the first guess no trimming is available but katrinab trims to the list of 2314 daily answers instead of the full list of 10657 allowable words - I call that cheating. Next, for each word in the full list, the trimmed list must be divided into buckets - one bucket for each of the 238 possible scores (3⁵ - the 5 impossible scores of 4 green and one yellow). That should be 10657x10657 operations but it sounds like katrinab is only doing 2314x2314: cheating plus not finding the best possible guess. Knuth's algorithm for colour mastermind picks the word from the full list whose fullest bucket contains the least entries. For word mastermind we can do better as many words will be equally good according to Knuth but the may differ in the number of words in the second (or Nth) fullest bucket. To find the best word the bucket lists for the good words must be sorted: O(238xlog(238)). Finally on my first python attempt I was using 17314x11881376 (british-english-insane x 26⁵) because I did not know that guesses were restricted to actual words.

Re: Does not have to be a time sink

Try that with british-english-insane on a 15 year old laptop that I got cheap because it was too low spec to run Vista.

Re: I've never even heard of Wordle, but ....

Throat's first comment was complaining about a type of comment that had not been made with a little mild flamebait. Just downvote and move on without feeding.

Re: Does not have to be a time sink

I did a quick python version but it would have taken minutes to find the best possible first guess. Without any real optimisation the C implementation finds that word in 2 seconds on a Pi. I considered hunting for wordle's dictionary but I was afraid of finding the list of answers. Using wordle's dictionary might get to the right answer in fewer guesses but there is a fair chance Josh Wardle made his dictionary from the same source. I will try american-english-insane tomorrow. It could pick sub-optimal choices trying to rule out words that cannot be the answer or it could offer better guesses that are not in the medium sized dictionary I was using before.

Does not have to be a time sink

There is only one puzzle per day and solving it takes under a minute even using hand crafted regular expressions on /usr/share/dict/american-english to minimise the score. Writing 360 lines of C to pick the next best guess only wastes an hour or two. It is a harmless speck of fun.

He ain't heavy, he's my brother: Bloke gives away SpaceX ticket because he was over weight limit

Re: me too

If you want a space reward to motivate getting fitter the target price for a ride on Starship is about $5000 (what you would currently pay for a vomit comet ticket). It will take a while for the price to drop that low (and for the final lithobraking manoeuvre to not be immediately followed by RUD). In the mean time: one month until Starship's Programmatic Environmental Assessment gets completed delayed.

There are plenty of exercises you can do with just your own body weight. Burpees are a fine example.

Throw away your Ethernet cables* because MediaTek says Wi-Fi 7 will replace them

Re: Power hog?

My bluetooth keyboard & mouse have off switches that I do not use because they last for several months on rechargeable batteries. The tiny irreplaceable batteries in my earphones are far more problematic.

Arm rages against the insecure chip machine with new Morello architecture

Or you could use valgrind right now.

If you want less CGI and more real effects in movies, you may get your wish: Inflatable film studio to orbit Earth

Re: fictional problem

Wakipedia has a handy list of Scifi films. There is a large serving of selection bias as I try to watch only good films and I could only separate out which films had zero-G if I had seen them. Most Scifi had no zero-G at all. Scifi that I have seen so know does include (at least a little) zero-G made a good return on investment according to wakipedia. The first three I checked did well financially: Captain Marvel, Passengers and Avengers: Endgame.

There is certainly Scifi that bombed, just like any other genre. If zero-G Scifi had not stepped up and provided some money then there is a genre that is famous for being early adopters of new video technology: P0rn. I think real zero-G film making has a clear business case: rich actors who want to go into orbit as a business expense.

(Watch out for Hollywood accounting: they try to pay percentage of the profits then divert the profits to their own over-priced post-production and distribution companies. Only percentage of the gross and fixed fee are worth working for.)

SpaceX Starlink sat streaks now present in nearly a fifth of all astronomical images snapped by Caltech telescope

Great potential for new science!

When lots of images have had streaks filled in by machine learning AIs searching those images for unusual objects will start finding new types of stars and galaxies only in the repaired parts images. ML corrections are fine for making pretty pictures but less good for discovering new objects.

On a (rare) clear night I can see the Moon, one or two planets, perhaps a dozen stars and about five aircraft. I have yet to see the ISS or a fresh batch of Starlinks. The Perseids have excellent correlation with cloud cover wherever I am. I saw the Milky way for the first time when on holiday in Tenerife. That was utterly beautiful and I thoroughly recommend looking up if you ever get over 50km from a village full of street lights.

I would like to thank Przemek Mróz for coming up with some proper numbers for the cost of Starlink and I would like to see similar work for other types of telescopes to weigh against the benefits.

Ad blockers altering website code is not a copyright violation, German court rules

Re: Decline cookies -> refused access

I appreciate the honesty. I do not have any right to read every web page on the net. They are clear about the cost of access so I can make an informed decision. Far better than granting access while activating stealth tracking for dissenters.

Meta Platforms demands staffers provide proof of COVID-19 booster vaccine before returning to office

Re: Good.

Omicron is filling up hospitals in the US to the point where the people who would really benefit from surgery are crowded out by the unvaccinated. You are welcome to not take omicron seriously in the privacy of your own home but if you start coughing, please stay there.

Although I would expect Meta to seek everyone's medical records via some underhand scheme the article says that they were demanding for proof of vaccination, not medical records from employees. If you have evidence Meta are demanding medical records you are welcome to post a link.

Nvidia promises British authorities it won’t strong Arm rivals after proposed merger

On the other hand ...

Back when Labour were in power they did not appear to understand the value of what they were selling and sold out for far less than it would take to convince a conservative.

Google: We disagree with Sonos patent ruling so much, we've changed our code to avoid infringement

Re: Real Class

By all means hate Google as much as you like but please do not focus that hatred on something actually good that Google did. Imagine what they could have done: buy Sonos and inflict the bad patents on everyone. License the patents on the condition that Sonos inflicts the bad patent on everyone else (avoids abuse of monopoly accusations). If you are too lazy to work out that bad patents have been the norm for decades please take a look at West Texas. You will find it is world famous as the number one place to file patent litigation for maximum damage when you know you have no cause for complaint