Posts by Charlie Clark 13418 publicly visible posts • joined 16 Apr 2007
I recently had the pleasure of travelling on the rail network in the UK (MCR airport to Edinburgh). I guess I got off lucky with one cancellation and a two-hour wait for the next one, which I would be allowed to take because of the ticket I bought? How do you guys cope with this?
I think there is a not so secret plan to cut the North West and probably most of Scotland off from the rest of the rail network.
just adopt Python 3 all goddamned ready
Python 3 is itself a moving target, though thankfully reasonably stable since 3.4. But if you were an early adopter of the Python 3 only asyncio (yes, I know there's a backport) then you'll have your own private compatibility worries with more to come as the API gets adapted to real world use cases.
...to submit Python for ANSI and/or ISO standardization
Not really: there are no differing vendors proffering different versions of the language and with the PEPs, Python already has a process for proposing changes. Special interests still get to force what they want down everybody else's throat.
Not having a WHOIS record is not much of defence in a fraud case, not least because there is no guarantee of the information being accurate. Easy enough via Interpol to subpoena the relevant registrar who, at least in Germany, will then provide the admin-c. For jurisdictions that do not comply then ICANN, as head domain honcho, has the ultima ratio of being able to turn off the relevant TLD. But, as anyone who's dealt with international fraud will tell you, getting the admin-c won't really get you very far as it's likely to lead to a company or trust registered in one of the jurisdictions like Delaware which don't provide information about their owners.
As usual, cleaning up their own backyards would be the best place to start.
The problem I found at that time was that the readers I looked at all worked differently
Largely because they were chasing different goalposts.
Particularly since HTML5, it's become a lot easier to use decent semantics in the HTML, such as the navigation tag, which suits both developers and users. Done correctly this largely obviates the need for the committee-driven WCAG stuff, though you still need to pay attention to colour schemes.
As Bruce Lawson likes to champion accessibility is usability.
Themostats suffer from delays which makes them inefficient. If heating, or in Google's case cooling, is sufficiently expensive the investing in efficiency makes sense. A simple, rule-based approach might be sufficient. For example, last year I swapped the simple radio themostats in my flat for ones with clocks and schedules and was able to keep the flat at a more agreeable temperature as a result with less manual intervention, even though the principle of the thermostat remained the same. I don't have sufficient data but I think the rule to throttle back overnight and set holiday timings has reduced my heating bill while increasing comfort (especially when returning from a long trip during a cold spell).
The rules could be extended using measurements such as termperature and humidity, amount of daylight, etc. This makes it a good domain for machine learning but still requires people to select features and outcomes, something that itself can be optimised in certain environments. Clearly not relevant for my environment but for a company the size of Google the savings could be relevant and it's also an excellent test case and advert for the technology. Because, despite the savings, this is largely PR.
At least at the moment commuter cars are out of the way once they are at their destination
This is an oxymoron: they are just in the way somewhere else: companies spend a considerable amount providing parking spaces for their employees. The economics of higher use of vehicles, plus less space set aside for vehicles doing nothing are compelling.
But it's not a binary solution: the economics will encourage some people to swap car ownership for mobility subscriptions (this is happening already among younger people in some places); others will pay more for the privilege (always a premium) to retain their own vehicle, which over time will be autonomous.
On a side note, on my way to a record number of downvotes! :-D
Anyone thinking that AVs are going to be the dawn of a New Utopia hasn't really thought about it all that much, if at all.
No Utopia, but definitely on the horizon and no need to shoot the messenger.
Along with insurance premiums, car parking charges are one of the ways that people will be encouraged not to use their own car in towns. Not that I think that your strawman is up to much: either people learn to take everything they need with them or they pay extra for the privilege. Fewer car parking spaces means more for living, which either means higher densities and potentially lower rents.
… it means they won't have to devote as much space to car-parking. Think-tanks and research organisations are already pushing to make car parking much more expensive, which is currently heavily subsidised. Over time this will save lots of resources and significantly change the design of cities.
On another note, if you want boxes, then use Tables.
No, if you want a table then use a table but don't use tables for layouting not least because it doesn't work well for different viewports. Flexbox gives you the best of both worlds.
Regarding the design: boxes and guttering but without a consistent grid is distracting. The guttering should be sufficient otherwise using background shading is less of a distraction.
Author has obviously zero understanding of how cookies work:
Indeed cookies exist to add state to a stateless protocol. I remember reading an early book on website statistics that explained how cookies could be used for tracking.
With http/2's increasing adoption, http is no longer entirely stateless and moving state into http means that the specification can decide which state is available to which processes. You can do this already with cookies but nothing forcers websites to do it.
I'm no fan of Google's data grab or monopolistic tendencies, but its engagement with open source projects is almost entirely positive. Your cherry-picking ignores the flaws in the USTPO process that should never allow a patent to be awarded because of prior art. Hence, Google's application to prevent AV1 itself becoming the target for future patent trolls. Google's offer of indemnification of VP8 and VP9 are other examples of this. Google is quite open that is wants better video compression to be able to sell more ads to more people. Blaming it for everything detracts from any argument you might be trying to make.
If yuou're going to go to QNX, why not just bring back BB10?
I guess that Google (could easily afford to buy BB) and others looked at that and decided against it. After all, BlackBerry did the same after a couple of years. I suspect that mixing so much virtualisation with direct access to the hardware where required isn't easy.
I think the plan is indeed to ditch Java for the OS at some point, though I don't think that it will be replaced by FASM, not least because of the huge variety of SoC's that are expected to run. KolibirOS looks nice but I think I'd rather investigate QNX or RiscOS as possibile altermatives.
In any case, while shrinking the footprint is indeed desirable, the mere fact that 8GB ROMs are pretty much standard for the lower end and can still lead to devices with sale prices < $ 30 tells you that this isn't the bottleneck it once was.
We need to be reducing our energy usage as a society, not increasing electronic waste because of the extra components required in a device for wireless charging.
Things aren't as simple as that. Power mats that can charge multiple devices at once can do this with less resources than multiple chargers and could ultimately reduce the need for chargers.
Micro-USB is fiddly but thus far I've not had to replace any cables and I do take them with me a lot. I suspect people who complain about cables don't pack them very carefully.
Anyway, got a micro-USB – USB-C adapter with the most recent powerbank freebie, thank Smarkets so now I can charge my and SWMBO's phones, powerbanks, headsets, Kobos and my Gemini from a single charger, which we did on a recent bike trip. Not so fussed about "fast charging" as long as I have a powerbank with me.
I thought that was the purpose of the vote to rid ourselves of our EU overlords, so we could go it alone and get £750m for the NHS per week
And cake, don't forget the cake!
@alister I think you might have ignored the possibility of sarcasm in the original post. The list of standards that the UK, if it ever leaves the EU, that it can replace with its own and then try and force on the world is long, and growing.
Given the events in Italy, that's a really bad analogy.
It's a good analogy if perhaps a little insensitive. The collapse is an example of the kind of catastrophic failure that physical products suffer from. We'll have to wait the results of the investigation to see what caused the failure, but if it is not the design or a original installation then the point stands.
IMO it's incomprehensible that Microsoft has zero accountability
Any liability is mediated by their ability to provide patches which, thus far, have been accepted as sufficient redess.
To be clear this covers all software where it is not possible to determine negligence. But, while it covers exploits due to sloppy programming, it also covers exploits of code that, at the time of writing was considered safe, with the exploits based on techniques that have been subsequently developed; cryptography being an obvious example.
I suspect that over time legal interpretation might change as software finds its way into more and more products and the difference hardware and software blurs, but at the moment that is the case.
The productivity software side of Android tablets, which has never been great, doesn't look like it's going to improve …
Seems like you're ignoring things like Samung's DeX and the, admittedly niche, Planet Gemini which show that you can do real work™ on Android devices. For my money I think the Gemini will spawn more devices of its ilk for those who want MS Office in their pocket (and I know quite a few who do).
Agreed, but that's not what this is about. The warnings API are not catchable exceptions (but the display level can be configured) that are displayed when code is run. The effect is different to going through the report generated by some static analyis or tracing: all it's more immediate and directly relevant to what you're doing. They're generally used to inform rather than complain. Here's one that I've just started getting from Numpy:
RuntimeWarning: numpy.dtype size changed, may indicate binary incompatibility. Expected 96, got 88
Of course, static checkers should pick them up as well but I think the nudge approach is a good idea.
…companies are considering placing it in increasingly public spaces like schools and hotels…
Well, at least in Europe the question of liability in the case of a breach has already been clarified. As, indeed, has the need to get permission before Amazon (or any other crooks) can listen in.
In the case of a release like this, the right thing is to pull it and put it in a "brown bag".
Opening beta releases to wider groups makes sense as it means more hardware / software / network combinations than you can manage inhouse. It works best with as much automated reporting as possible and requires testers to be aware that their settings and contents might get trashed: definitly opt-in only.
It is more than just a skin, it is the integration with Edge on Windows - i.e. cross platform browsing experience
Given that the engine is different, that's sort of debatable. It inevitably means that some stuff is supported on one platform (for example WebP on Android but not on Windows or IOS) but not another so the shared "browsing experience" is basically tabs, passwords and bookmarks.
Cheap Android smartphones aren’t just bad for the environment because they’re destined for landfill
This is the destiny for most consumer electronics, including premium smartphones. Okay, some of the stuff might get shipped off to third world for, ahem, recycling, ie. letting kids try and burn, solder, scratch whatever they can out of the phone, but the real environmental footprint is in the production of the devices: slave labour in Africa to mine and process the ores for the rare metals (Tantalum, etc.) used in the production of all smartphones.
Only the stock shorters were hurt and that's a pretty dubious practice anyway.
Short-selling isn't dubious, it's naked short-setting, ie. trading with shares you don't own, that is. Musk likes to play fast and loose with the market: the market can play back. Making any kind of announcement that can afffect the market is regulated in the US and any attempt to affect the share price is an offence, which is why Musk is being investigated.
One example: canned replies to text messages from loved ones. No thanks, Google, you're being weird, creepy and intrusive.
Interesting, I've come to understand Google's suggestions in Allo as a bit like CAPTCH's: they're training some new machines on people's responses. I think this is much more likely to be part of customer service automation than really trying to second guess the user, because that's the kind of service that Google sells to businesses and it's the same kind of indirection.
The GIF suggestions are more directly aimed at the consumer: want to send cute kitten pictures? Just press GIF, type kitten and send. We definitely don't need this kind of shit, but it can still be fun!
@Argh
I've been off Samsung stock ROMs for years so I can't really remember the Samsung camera app but the one with Lineage is pretty good and there others out there. I guess your point is that there features in the BLOBs that you might lose but the only feature I think that is really missing on my S5 is the FM radio.
The S9 is cheaper than the S8 in their deals atm.
Then shop around a bit… Google tells me that I can get an S8 for around € 300 and an S9 for € 570.
OTOH if you really want an S9 then go for it.
Just got a snail mail marketing shot from Vermin Media offering me £60 off a Samsung J3
A friend of mine bought a J5 and was very happy with it until he found out it doesn't do 5 Ghz wifi… unlike my five-year old S5.
Consumer electronics manufacturers have been doing this for years: crippling the cheaper versions to artificially segement the market.
What that tells you is that there are discounts to be had. VF gets volume discounts from Samsung and may even get another one for this offer. And they also know that people almost never cancel their contracts on time… But you can probably get to within £100 of the total price with a SIM-free phone.
Save yourself some money and get a new or second-hand S8 or similar and stick LineageOS on it. After at most a couple of weeks (more likely a couple of days) you'll be over the "must have shiny" feeling will be eclipsed by the feeling of having saved a fortune and still having a great phone.
I have enough useless non-removable crap from Google. I don't need duplicates of it from Samsung.
FWIW Samsung phones are generally among the easier ones to root and install another version of Android on. This gets you all the hardware goodness without the cruft and is to be recommended on older phones which are out of warranty anyway.
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