Posts by Charlie Clark

UK government plays power broker with small modular reactor suitors

Re: Energy Security

I know all about the Dunkelflaute and it is a serious issue, especially as the proposed solution for heating, heat pumps require more electricity at a time when production is low. But it is not insurmountable, and doesn't detract from the baseload argument that Germany is already producing more than 50% of its electricity for most of the year from renewables. Nuclear simply doesn't make sense for the few months when there is a shortfall.

We need more market-based solutions on what to do with the massive overgeneration in the summer, as the current subsidies are not only cripplingly expensive at estimated € 30bn this year alone, but they also remove the incentive to develop efficient solutions. Again, if successive governments hadn't deliberately limited the buildout of windpower and made electricity more expensive where it was installed (this is changing now), there would have been more time to work on complementary strategies.

their government is in the process of collapsing, largely thanks to their Greens.

This is untrue. The collapse was deliberately provoked by the FDP who were going back on the coalition agreement, but most policy disagreements were actually with the SPD.

Re: Energy Security

As John Robson notes, you need to consider the capital costs involved. The marginal cost per kWh for renewables started to undercut nuclear several years ago, as demonstrated by the buildout in places such as Texas, not known for its green credentials.

But, if you mention France, you might want to look up blackouts in the summer as it is forced to reduce generation at is nuclear plants. You can even get cheaper electricity as long as you're prepared to live with reduced supply or cutoffs. Luckily, it can usally import cheap electrictiy from Germany at such times.

Re: Energy Security

Isn't it fun to trot out the German case, without details, as evidence of bad policy?

But there's more to it than that. The original consensus in Germany to phase out nuclear power did give everybody sufficient time to plan and the main argument – that renewables compete with nuclear for base load is still broadly true – but Merkel reversed this only to reverse the reverse. This not only buggered up planning, but it also saddled German taxpayers with around € 11 bn in compensation payouts thanks to contracts hastily drawn up, against the advice of the responsible minister at the time, who also noted that small extension to the original lifetimes, wouldn't make much difference. But the bigger problem was a dramatic slowdown in the buildout of renewables, especially in areas with nuclear power stations. Yes, the attendant risk of hoping to use gas to cope with temporary capacity shortfalls backfired in 2022, but this was largely down to 15 years of different governments ignoring the arguments against a single supplier run by a dictator.

There's still work to be done, especially on the pricing mechanism to prevent future price shocks, but the worst is (probably) over. And, the consensus of all involved, is that a return to nuclear wouldn't significantly reduce power prices, not least because of the staggering capital costs.

Mozilla's Firefox browser turns 20. Does it still matter?

That indeed does pose a "supply-chain" risk: hack Chrome and the world is your oyster.

But the article, or more accurately, the opinions of the unnamed tech bro, aren't really worth much consideration as they're very much in th Silicon Valley bubble as evinced by the nostalgia for Twitter. Twitter was always an echo chamber and, later, a collection of echo chambers and now its really just where Elon Musk goes to stroke his own ego.

EU irate about geo-locked Apple IDs

Why should it make licensing more expensive? The current setup allows content providers to do deals per country to maximise their profits by charging what the market will bear in each country. But then they also want to take advantage of the single market for payments and, most often, tax so that all deals content is licensed from a single subsidiary in a low-tax country, to other subsidiaries in other countries. Why should the advantage only be one way?

Re: IP Geolocation

Blocking by IP range? Sure, that's a common enough practice but different to the case described in the article.

The subscriptions are cross-border. But there may be strings attached, similar to roamings. For example, for a while it became common for pubs to show football matches from the satellite services of other countries. This was perfectlly legal at the time, and if fact Sky started only with a licence for Luxemburg, but it went to court and the Premier League won on a technicality – I think it was the use of their copyright (logos, etc.) that could be restricted, not the football itself, but I could be wrong.

Re: IP Geolocation

It's also easy to work around, which makes it pretty stupid.

This is already the case for many things, for example paid streaming services: subscribe to Sky in one country and you can watch still watch it in another (EU) country. Though it did take a court case to establish this.

Apple, as usual, seems to mix arrogange with technical incompetence – there is a degree of inviolability with accounts that mean that you can't change the e-mail address, so I have at least two ghost accounts that I can neither access nor delete, even though I still have the e-mail address. And the various stores still seem to have the same antiquated code base that they had twenty years ago; it rivals that of airline companies for inflexibility. But, as long as they keep selling gadgets they don't think they need to care.

Intel: Our finances are in the toilet, we're laying off 15K, but the free coffee is back!

Re: Panic

I think the point is not about specific catering contracts and more about contracts in general, which might include, for example, office rental or vehicle leasing and indicate a higher credit risk.

Re: Panic

Indeed: from an accounting perspective such costs can almost always be offset against tax, either of the company or employees where they can be considered as their cash equivalent. So such "cost cutting" usually has no real benefit for a company but is a quick way of reducing headline budgets to make it look like the company is trying to control costs, but this is a different thing altogether.

BOFH: Don't threaten us with a good time – ensure it

Or, at the very least have his own policies and payout exemptions tested… No payout when his company car mysteriously drove itself into a wall, because the doors can be opened by the proximity of one of his wearables…

Well, there is that but your original post was more general.

While we know the industry has woken up to the potential golden opportunities, I think there is value in having our assumptions that we know what we're doing when it comes to security checked every now and then. But, having observed several negotiations and box-ticking exercises along these lines, I'd always recommend spending the money on pen-testing first to know where you really are vulnerable, especially new exploits for old software/practices become available. These can form the basis of any discussions, either with insurers, or with customers who expect it. Done well, it's like a checkup at the dentist and can be educational for all concerned

OTOH mindless box-ticking remains the most popular approach!

Re: Brilliant

Sounds quite habit forming. If so, better to learn good habits no matter where you are.

Re: Brill!ant

The recommendation for the last few years from several official bodies, including the German Federal Office for IT Security, is that as long as passwords are sufficiently complex, they shouldn't expire. This is because forcing people to renew often ends up encouraging bad practice, along with the lockouts by the usual suspects who changed passwords just before going on holiday…

Passphrases to generate mnemonics (Battery horse staple…), or stategies like yours are great for stems, but need extending with something service specific to make them both more complex and memorable.

Re: Brilliant

I recently came across just such an exhibit! The person concerned had left the company so no, er, discussions were required.

So, you always not what you're doing? I'm not going to argue that all insurance policies are reasonable and reasonably priced – because we all know there are plenty of overpriced products with little or benefit – but the basic principle of pooling risk is sound.

Euro execs extend net zero timescales amid energy cost and supply crunch

Re: Increased demand is being held back by rising energy costs…

US LNG wasn't available at the time, due to US export restrictions, and it wasn't just the US but the Baltic states, Scandinavia and Poland and others. Not that I consider our new "friends" including Azerbaijan or Qatar much better or reliable, but they're less in a position to start a war directly with us, though Azerbaijan is close…

Energy security isn't a myth, but you do highlight some of the challenges associated with it and other parts industry. As I've previously said, I'm fairly open to continuing to ruin the Chinese economy by importing their solar cells below cost. But in Europe, solar electricity simply doesn't provide anything like as much energy as we need, particularly for heating. But, unfortunately, it's attracted the most government support. I'd prefer more extensive use of solarthermal for heating (yes, I know the problems are the same in the winter but the yields are always much higher) and more investment in doing stuff with the overproduction in the summer: adsorption-based cooling and Fischer-Tropf methylisation spring to mind. But there are alternatives and we should push harder for more efficient vehicles: the German car industry only has itself to blame for getting the government to water down emission rules so that it could continue to prioritise larger and heavier SUVs and having fewer lorries on the road.

As you noted yourself, lead times for nuclear power plants effectively rule them out. And that's before the politics of whether people want them and their waste.

Re: Increased demand is being held back by rising energy costs…

As usual, the issue isn't really liberalisation but the associated regulation (or lack thereof): there were no incentives to reduce demand and increase efficiency and competition authorities allowed a wage of mergers that left most countries with cartels with a vested interest in the status quo (though other pop rock groups were available!).

Re: Increased demand is being held back by rising energy costs…

Let's ignore the "green" aspects for a while and concentrate on the issue of energy security: we have neither sufficient hydrocarbons nor Uranium in Europe to be able to rely on them.

The deals with Russia were made against the advice and requests of our allies and trading partners and the risks associated with the dependence have become only too obvious, though Uranium continues to be imported from Russia and is even processed in Germany…

Energy independence remains a strategic imperative, but the policies, especially those pushing for the electrification of everything and, therefore, a massive expansion of generation and grid capacity need revisiting.

Increased demand is being held back by rising energy costs…

As if that's a bad thing! Europe is a net importer of energy and the market has been getting more expensive. The only solution, and we've known this since the oil crises of the 1970s, is to reduce demand and find new, more reliable sources of supply.

But it's reasonable to question many of the policies which are, in effect as Andrew Orlowski said years ago, subsidies for the middle class. Think of feed-in tariffs for renewable energy and subsidies for EVs. Not a bad idea to get the market started but they have subsequently acted as a drag on innovation to reduce prices.

A "worst first" approach would have the twin benefits of reducing demand quickly, meaning more capacity is available for other uses that can't scale back easily, whilst benefitting those least able to make investments themselves.

Python dethrones JavaScript as the most-used language on GitHub

But let's be honest, the reason it's popular is primarily because it's easy to learn to an "okay" standard, which appeals to the masses

Not necessarily the masses, but for a language for non-programmers was a design goal and places the language in an illustrious tradition.

I think there's a lot of questionable syntax/design decisions in Python

Ah, yes: you hate significant whitespace and consider it eblematic of "poor design decisions". Significant whitespace seems to be a marmite issue: you either love it or hate it. Personally, I think it visually helps reinforce the structure. But, if you don't like it, you're not going to like Python. I think the same divide probably applies to other "typical" aspects which favour clarity and expression and the fact that "everything is an object". No one will criticise Python code for using an additional line of code to make something clearer.

it's comparatively slow (hence why they've tried to address that somewhat in recent versions over the years)

It's more of a tick-tock approach: new features are implemented in Python and optimised later. I seem to remember Python 2.5 was an optimisation release and we had another one after Python 3 became stable. As for "inherently slow", it depends very much what you're doing and what you're comparing it with. Memory allocation for new objects is noticeably slower than compiled languages and loops are known to be slower. For the vast majority of code it is totally unimportant and the benefits of code that it is easier, to read, test and maintain far outweigh the benefits. In addition, PyPy has shown just how fast things can get if you use a JIT and is, in my view, a reason why there is little or no need to encourage static typing.

hence it needs to rely on a lot of functions/libraries/frameworks written in a higher-level language like C to perform many tasks efficiently, then you can't directly credit the Python language for this aspect.

You say that like it's a bad thing! It was a conscious decision to be so pragmatic that has proved both popular and successful to allow libraries written in other languages to be easily embedded in the language. But it actually serves to mitigate another criticism, the "not invented here" syndrome (NIH), that affects many languages. Contrary to the opinion held by many, for example, most mathematicians are not trained programmers and very happy to be able to use Numpy. They could, of course, use Fortran directly in many situations, but there a good reasons why they don't.

As for Django, I've never really liked it, but it has the same advantage as something like WordPress, in that it automates a lot of common tasks, particularly CRUD, albeit at the price of a dreadfully inefficient ORM (a bad idea in itself). But, while it remains popular, it would be a mistake to consider it the only option: more and more work is being done using headless frameworks like FastAPI which work well with frontend frameworks and allow for a different and more flexible approach to the automated creation of GUI controls.

Python is far from perfect, and some of the recent changes including the faster release and shorter support cycles are not welcome. And, of course, Python processes do not scale multiple CPUs as well as other languages, though again, this not really a problem that people encounter everyday. But, before the GIL is dropped entirely, I think more work needs to be done to make the development of asynchronous and synchronous code within the same codebase. This has been brewing since the introduction of generators (actually a major shift) and is still working its way through. I hope, that in a couple of years, people won't really have to care any more but, at the moment, there's no denying it's a considerable overhead.

Re: It's completely bollocks

I agree that Typescript and Javascript shouldn't be counted separately and, indeed, it looks like Typescript is due to replace Javascript in popularity, but I don't think the comparison with C and C++ makes sense.

I've not done much in Javascript, but having seen it displace Python in some web stuff because of its use in the front end and ease of use in asynchronous, I'm now seeing it being displaced again as the controller stuff becomes increasingly declarative and the complexity of node based stuff becomes unmanagable.

Re: Apples and oranges

What, for most people day to day, is the problem with the GIL? I know what the GIL is and I know why it would be useful, in some situations to be without it. But I don't think this affects what most people do most of the time.

Actually, the "batteries included" mantra of Python means that you can do an awful lot without frameworks. And where frameworks are used, these are commonly written in a high-performance language such as C++, Fortran, or nowadays Rust. And this is what has always made Python popular: non-computer science graduates can write usable maintainable code on their own for their job.

Microsoft tries out wooden bit barns to cut construction emissions

Re: Cross laminated timber, eh?

Of course it's greenwashing, probably driven by a combination of building costs and carbon credit arbitrage.

Bob, read up on a couple facts rather than talking out of your arse. I don't really care if you're convinced about climate change – there is enough variation in the last couple of thousand years to allow for discussion at least about how much, and, if we get another solar induced ice age or even just another Maunday Minimum, you can expect priorities to change swiftly – but you're badly wrong on ever other point.

US Army should ditch tanks for AI drones, says Eric Schmidt

Re: Schmidt Has a Point

You could make it clearer that "removing the Iranian government" could be done without an invasion, because after Afghanistan and Iraq, the US seems to have learned how little they can achieve.

Re: So....

You might want to watch a few videos on how these kind of restrictions are removed by those who know what they're doing. If necessary, HEX-editing can be used, but it's usually a lot easier to modify the firmware and upload it.

The soldierless war fallacy

You can go back to the H-bomb and before to see people dreaming and winning wars without losing a soldier. This has usually led to some fairly awful developments: gas; biological weapons; nuclear, etc. But they've all turned out to be fairly useless when it comes to winning wars. Sure, you can kill huge numbers of the enemy, but at some point you have to actually move bodies into the area if you also want to win the peace. I think we'll see this play out for Israel in Gaza and Lebanon.

Re: Schmidt Has a Point

Afghanistan demonstrated the limits of technical superiority: it gets less and less effective when the enemy adopts the cheapest mitigation strategy.

Re: So....

DJI, and many other manufacturers, do enforce geofencing on their hardware, which does limit where you can use them, but this is essentially a restriction for consumers. Easy enough to workaround if you have technicians who know what they're doing.

Dropbox to shed another 500 staff, CEO takes 'full responsibility'

Re: Two Thoughts

Yeah, buyout is what I started thinking.

I'm lucky that I got 11 GB free storage from DropoBox. 15 years ago that was a big thing… but now I have two different Google accounts (fully legimitately, one for work, the other private) that both have more. I still use Dropbox as a convenient way of synching photos from my phone to my computer. I think it remains the easiest "cloud" storage system to use and share stuff universally, but that's not much of USP.

UK sleep experts say it's time to kill daylight saving for good

Re: I disagree

Double daylight is a two-hour change, what you seem to be suggesting is a change of timezone.

Sleep experts all seem to ignore the fact that some people just function better later in the day (or even deep into the night)

If they ignore facts, they wouldn't really be experts, would they? Most sleep experts I've heard, including Richard Wiseman, are perfectly aware that people have varying sleep patterns and the advice is usually to go to bed when you feel tired, though regular hours are generally a good thing. There was a good discussion on the matter on The Infinite Monkey Cage a couple of years ago.

My own experience is that, when I'm away from cities, it's much easier to follow the sun and go to bed earlier than I would otherwise.

Re: Get rid of DST now!

I seem to remember that Scandinavian countries are most even of moving the clocks.

Nonsense, it's actually all down to the member states. There was a "consultation" in 2019 with an overwhelming response to drop the change, though turnout was miniscule, and the Commission handed it over to member states who have since studiously avoided the issue.

Getting rid of it would now impose no technical restraints and it would be a good opportunity to adjust the odd time zone: Spain should definitely move to GMT and it's arguable that Poland should be +0200.

The troublesome economics of CPU-only AI

Optimising for future loads

If an AI proof of concept fails, at least with the CPU you can put it to work running databases or VMs.

True, but with increased containerisation, what you really need are lots and lots of cores but most of these don't need to be that powerful which really suits ARM designs.

Apple quietly admits 8GB isn't enough in 2024, M4 iMac to ship with 16GB as standard

Re: And what about our friend Linux.

Will probably start moving to that when the premium drops but 16GB should be okay for anyone other than developers.

Re: And what about our friend Linux.

If you look at the architecture you'll see what they mean also applies to any PC OS due to the way memory is used/shared between CPU and GPU: as long as you have enough, this is way faster and, therefore, efficient on MacOS than other platforms but more and more programs want access to GPU resources, so more memory will be required.

Re: And what about our friend Linux.

If you're running Teams, you should be looking at 16GB: this is the resource hog number one on Windows PCs.

Microsoft accuses Google of creating a lobbying front called 'Open Cloud Coalition'

Re: The root of the issue

Anti-trust legislation is all about preventing monopoly like this and Google has recently lost a few suits because of this.

Satya Nadella asked for 50% cut in his incentive payout over security failures

Many parliaments have blanket exemptions from prosecution for most of its members and means of removing them in specific cases to allow prosecutions to go ahead. But this is much less of a problem in the US than regulatory capture and the ability to do deals to avoid prosecution in the few cases where regulators, especially the SEC, do intervene. Maybe if a few bankers had done time instead of just accepting a large fine while avoiding liability things might be different.

Great article, Ian

Really appreciate the comment that you are fed up at having to deal with this stuff all the time. However, I don't think you should expect to see much change: US company law is fundamentally different than in Europe with the shareholders given almost god-like powers over handling misdemeanours with even the courts scared to intervene. In Europe, company bosses can be held personally liable for certain actions of their companies: look at the way ex-VW managers have been in court over the diesel scandal and compare that with, for example, Purdue's opioid peddling, but there are plenty of other examples

OTOH, because criminal liability is more extensive in Europe, we have fewer class action compensation suits, especially when an idiot™ does something stupid, but the packaging didn't have a warning not to do so: cutting themselves with a knife because they didn't realise it was a sharp, scalding themselves with hot liquid or killing their pet after putting it in the microwave or tumble dryer to dry…

The underlying problem is that, in America there is an almost equivalence between wealth and morality with rich people often considered, if not necessarily virtuous, then at least blessed, despite any evidence to the contrary, by a population that is largely envious of their wealth. Compare "if you're so clever, how come you're not rich" with "Berlin might be broke but it's still sexy!"

Not necessarily, but the policy of revolving doors has essentially led to regulatory capture with the poachers regularly becoming gamekeepers. Add to this the deliberate underfunding of some regulators which forces them to adopt "light regulation", ie. letting the industry regulate itself: look how well this worked for Boeing for decades.

It's about time Intel, AMD dropped x86 games and turned to the real threat

Re: Action at the eleventh hour

You seem to be ignoring both the article and market data. While x86 still dominates on PCs and servers, GPUs are the ones with all the profits and ARM for server is finally starting to take off. In this environment, neither Intel nor AMD will be able to dominate the market, which, nVidia aside, is increasingly starting to look like a cartel of vertically integrated providers: AWS, Google, Microsoft, etc.

I've got a current project which requires 40+ cores because everything has been virtualised to a separate "microservice". Fortunately, we've got some time to investigate before we decide what to go with, but from what I understand so far, memory and bandwidth are more important that CPU oomph so that some kind of oodle-core ARM setup with ≥ 256 GB would probably make sense than the Xeons we're currently borrowing or the AMDs which I'd want if we decide to stay with x86 – it may be too early for that kind of migration at the moment, but I'm sure it's going to become more common.

Musk claims Cybertruck has become profitable at last

Re: Trucks vs. Cybertruck

You might need to watch again: it's not dead and seems to be enjoying itself.

Re: Trucks vs. Cybertruck

This?

BOFH: The Boss pulled the plug on our AI, so we pulled the pin on him

I was hoping for a shopping list: cattle prod, car battery, gaffer tape, carpet, quick lime…

Polish radio station ditches DJs, journalists for AI-generated college kids

Re: Max Headroom!

He would be worth listening to…

I guess Spotify, et al. have shown the way forward for the majority of listeners who really don't care what they hear and find subscriptions a convenient way of paying for it. They'll be even more profit when all the music played is generated. You mean it isn't already? Well, maybe not all.

Those of us who remember DJs like John Peel – deservedly a legend – are in a very small minority: Trouser suits, that's what I was thinking about as the mic came bake on during a session from The Sundays.

The horror that is VHS revived for horror movie release

Re: No idea

Well, there's no doubt that DVD is better than VHS both in resolution and handling of detail, but I always found the artefacts very annoying. But my point is that, as long as we were watching on CRT screens with a diagonal of less than 80cm, which was the standard until well into the new millenium, at the distance of 2 - 3 metres, the visual differences were marginal. What DVDs did offer was convenience: skipping through chapters, and easier access to "bonus" material.

Anecdotally, people I knew tended to buy more box sets of TV shows than they did films.