Posts by Charlie Clark

Admins wonder if the cloud was such a good idea after all

End of innovation and efficiency gains

I think the electricity price idea is a red herring: all things being equal, for the same over time, power demand should decline as more efficient hardware is used.

The model is predicated that companies will find the move from CAPEX to OPEX preferable, especially as systems scale up: 100,000 servers will cost you more over time if you rent them, but you'll have to pay up front for your own. In addition, vendors promised that they would be the better administrators and would be able to squeeze greater efficiencies out of shared infrastructure than clients could on their own. However, it looks like that advantage disappeared a few years ago and has since been superseded by the hydra of complexity as the vendors have to manage more and more complex operations and abstractions. They're probably also introducing cross-subsidies to make their "AI" offerings looks more competitive: there are potential advantages there for those who don't offer them.

Intel's 120 TOPS Lunar Lake AI PC chips have landed

Demand?

Is anyone seriously considering adding "AI PCs" to the standard model line up for their companies?

I can see a niche section for developers, replacing the "workstation" line, but the proposed cost and the impact on mobility for these beasts, would seem to rule them out for general use. And we know that smaller models are coming: model developers have dual incentives to develop these – their own power use and market demand for more efficient models running locally.

Re: Congratulations TSMC

Yes, but I wonder what they charged for it? We're moving towards TSMC as the single supplier for CPUs in the world! At least until China manages to develop its own processes.

Veeam debuts its Proxmox backup tool – and reveals outfit using it to quit VMware

Ransomware?

Hock Tan: Nice data centre you have there. Would be a pity if something happened to it, or, for example, it suddenly stopped working. But you can easily avoid that happening by sending $ 50 million, in Bitcoin, to my account…

If they have to scale up to meet increased demand, you can expect support costs to rise somewhat. But, even, if they double and there's nothing to indicate they will, it'll still be a lot cheaper than the alternatives and businesses should be prepared to pay properly for good support.

Cloud computing hits the nuclear button amid energy crisis

Re: Pros and cons of nuclear

I guess the real issue is getting data centre operators to pay the full price of additional generational and grid capacity. Though given the absence of a national grid in the US, and the problems with many of the regional ones, this might be asking too much, but increasing the price would seem a good place to start: for years US energy policy has largely been able to ignore the enormous capital costs of increased generation capacity.

Faulty valve sent Astrobotic's Peregrine lander straight back to Earth's atmosphere

Re: Another helium valve ...

Yep, building two of everything used to be standard for NASA well after Hubble – didn't they have to use the second mirror because there was a problem with the first?

Having a backup is an excellent rule of thumb but one that fell out of fashion after JIT and the "put" that you can always source another one whenever you need it, predicated on cheap energy, labour and frictionless global transport networks…

Re: Another helium valve ...

Well, IIRC previous (failure is not an option) doctrine at NASA would have required the removal of all components of type X if one component of the type fails. The time and expense involved in doing this is less than replacing the failed mission so I'm not sure the lesson learned is anything other than: we used to know how to avoid this.

Re: Another helium valve ...

Nitrogen is far from inert.

HPE to pursue $4B claim against estate of Mike Lynch over Autonomy acquisition

Re: True Fraud

Thanks for the details.

One of the problems with many companies nowadays is the essentially monopsodic structure of investors who can and do pursue deals between companies in which they have interests: it's perfectly legal for Andreesen et al. to own share in one company and encourage another company, in which he also has shares, to launch a takeover bid. It could be to drive consolidation but it could also just be because he wants a payout.

HP agreed to buy without due diligence, which is essentially why the case in the US went nowhere. However, it was also determined that Autonomy's accounting was probably, er, a bit too flexible, which is why fraud and compensation cases in the UK succeeded.

Further action against the estate is going to go nowhere: by now the money will be wrapped in the same kind of trusts that they love in Delaware. And even if it isn't, UK courts don't award damages on that scales. But they need to go through the motions before inevitable write-off.

Rust for Linux maintainer steps down in frustration with 'nontechnical nonsense'

Re: Could have been worse

I think you raise a key point about the differences between the BSD and Linux kernels. The smaller the kernel is, the easier it is to make it well-designed and, well, safe because boring, no matter which language it's written in: this is one of the points that Tenenbaum wanted to make with Minix and the Linus, for various reasons, some of them good, decided not to go with and which has led to the sprawling Linux kernel.

Really, since the death of the low-level restrictions imposed by the x86 architecture, some kind of microkernel for Linux would make sense, with a lot of stuff currently in the kernel moved out and a necessary separation of responsibilities imposing more discipline on components. We've seen many projects, including Haiku, be very successful by adopting this approach.

But I also think that the proposal for a kernel written in Rust is at least a sleight of hand, if not disingenuous, because it would end up imposing exactly the same kind of discipline. As a result, I think it's unlikely that we'll see such a project being successful unless its driven by one of the bigger players, in which case my money would be on Google as it needs an OS that can run on much more varied hardware than most. Microsoft's interest in Rust is much more limited to systems administration and deployment.

France charges Telegram CEO with multiple crimes

Re: EFF

…on servers you can't sequestrate to demonstrate the truth of your assertion?

We'll see how this plays out.

Re: "French president Emannuel Macron used his X account"

The press is also active on social media, so you can rely on them to disseminate the information that you provide by press release, which also asserts copyright. It's a logical fallacy to think that @LeGrandFromage is either a better source or has a greater reach, but it conveniently fits a narrative that journalists like to push about being close to both source and audience.

Twitter became popular as it was supposed to disintermediate between celebrity and prole and give a sense of intimacy. Except, that it fairly quickly became clear the teams of PR droids were posting instead of insert_name_here. And then blue tick of "verified" went up for sale to the highest bidder…

Re: EFF

I know that the French have run up some fairly restrictive laws regarding encryption but these are failing meaningless given existing European legislation and rulings from the ECJ. As for the conspiracy and complicity charges: the prosecutor will have to prove this and that's a high. Plea bargains don't exist so running up a large list of charges in the hope that some will stick, or at least give you something to trade with, won't help.

Nope, it's a fishing expedition.

Re: "It looks like he didn't comply"

It's your perception: Telegram has been popular in many circles for well over a decade largely because of its reliability worldwide and ability to handle very large groups. The API is also pretty useful – we use it to run a gatekeeper on one group to reduce the spammers.

Re: EFF

Which crimes has Telegram itself been actively engaged in? And which activities are are not also happening on other platforms? Other platforms have also refused to provide the kind of data governments are seeking.

I have no objection to Durov being arrested and charged but I think it will be difficut to make any charges about malpractice on the platform stick against him personally. I think this is likely to be little more than fishing expedition to see what kind of information can be provided about, say, potential terrorists in France.

Re: "French president Emannuel Macron used his X account"

Because governments still have their PR software wired to Twitter – probably only the last high profile people to as the platform continues to lose relevance outside the conspirasthere™.

I agree that these services should not be used for government announcements; we have press agencies in an attempt to ensure fair access, but it massages their egos to think they have so many followers, even if most of these are bots.

As for Macron? I think he's probably better than the last two, and possibly the last three.

Re: "It looks like he didn't comply"

I'm not sure how consular assistance would help in such a matter: the Durov brothers are not popular at the Kremlin but Telegram is tolerated as a necessary evil after they failed to block it a few years ago. Another way of looking at this: he's able to discuss things with French authorities safely away from Russian influence, which isn't necessarily the case in Dubai.

Tired of airport security queues? SQL inject yourself into the cockpit, claim researchers

Sounds about right

These schemes are always dreamt up overnight and then dumped on some underling to "make it happen" and the DHS is probably worth than most. It was dreamt up after September 2001 and was mainly a repository for cheap airport security, with federal employees exempt from minimum wage. Whoever came up with it has long since pocketed their bonuses and is probably enjoying their retirement but might well reply: "if it took them this long to discover, it was obviously good enough".

Zuckerberg says Biden administration pressured Meta to police COVID posts

Re: Words fail me...

Yes, despite evidence that lockdowns were the most destructive and least effective of the policies employed, they stuck around because they pandered to the sense of fear that many people. quite understandably, had; fear is not good counsellor. I'd throw in the mirage of the track and trace follies. Fortunately, however, one of the lasting innovations (along with some of the fantastic findings from the RECOVERY study) was checking the sewers for viral last. We're seeing this being put to good use in Gaza where it will hopefully help prevent a polio epidemic.

And, of course, some of these policies helped deflect attention from glaring shortcomings in primary care which correlated unsurprisingly with higher mortality rates. I've no problem with people developing a culture of "we won't come this weekend because I/other/the children have a cold/flu…" or of people taking vaccination more seriously, but I would expect a return to the mean over the next few years.

Re: Re:

This isn’t Reddit, but it’s becoming a similar cesspool.

Says someone who joined last year…

Re: Words fail me...

Not sure which studies you were looking at, but in Europe the spread via aerosols was determined in spring 2020. By which time it was also established that children, somewhat unusually, were not acting as vectors, but policies worldwide insisted on taking and keeping children out of school for well over a year and . Comorbidity factors (age, gender, obesity, heart and kidney conditions) were also established fairly quickly and could, and should have been used to improve protection for the most vulnerable.

Studies regarding mask-wearing were not conclusive: I could point to the Cochrane report, but this is known to be controversial. Basically, in future pandemics, we've got 8 - 12 weeks when general restricitive policies can be helpful, after that it's about protecting the vulnerable, triage and vaccination.

Re: "I'm not trying to play politics or foment controversy"

I take as much issue with the statement "progressive administration" as I do with half the crap the Trump spouts; it really is difficult to consider any US legislation from the last four years as progressive, in the general meaning of the term: tariffs and corporate handouts, certainly aren't. US elections are often dominated by false dichotomies which whip up fervour that ultimately benefits the real legislators: the lobbyists.

Re: Words fail me...

This isn't about how crazy the posts were, but who decides whether they can stay up or not. From what I know this is not the jurisdiction of the US government so, for better or worse, this should be down to the courts (and possibly the FCC), with Facebook and Co. being held liable (currently the DMCA gives them some degree of exemption) for the content, as is the case in other countries.

I'll note in passing that in Germany, the phrase "pandemic of anti-vaxxers" (and this is not some obscure group of Data General fans), which was popularised by the Federal Health Minister from 2021 onwards, was disputed by the experts at the time as factually inaccurate, and may also end up before the courts.

I'm all in favour of vaccination but stand by most of the criticism of many of the policies enacted around the world by various governments, who frequently resembled headless chickens. There were plenty of idiots on both sides who were keen to ignore established, and therefore tried and tested) epidemic protocols, and the evidence about the source and spread of this or other viruses. We still have the opportunity to learn lessons but I suspect that, within 5 years, most of those lessons will be down in that basement filing cabinet behind the door with the "Beware of the leopard" sign!

Warren Buffett’s favorite insurer GEICO drops VMware for OpenStack

Re: Hey Broadcom !

Broadcom is indeed preparing to dump the consumer and lower-end offerings in the hope of keeping large customers happy with something that is cheaper and easier than moving everything to Microsoft.

Anyone who has more than a couple of VMs should definitely be assessing the alternatives before that bill with the massive increase in licence costs arrives.

CrowdStrike's meltdown didn't dent its market dominance … yet

Re: "a costly and time consuming process"

No, the important things are: are there any competitors? and are they any better?

Consolidation across the whole IT services means little choice, higher prices, worse services and yet businesses and regulators keep waving it through.

Astronomers back call for review of bonkers rule that means satellite swarms fly without environment checks

Re: Honest numbers please

I don't think focussing on the fuel used is helpful. If necessary, this can be dealt with through some kind of carbon-pricing, though only if all launchers agree.

What isn't in doubt, is the problem of having many tens of thousands of satellites in orbit. This causes problems in and of itself, but also, of course, when they come to end of life. We don't know the long term consequences of letting them all burn up in reentry and, if our experience of terrestial pollution has shown us anything, it's that we shouldn't wait until we have a problem before we start dealing with it.

A liability and insurance based scheme that makes companies liable for the debris would be helpful, but this probably needs accompanying by some kind of fund to stop companies declaring bankruptcy as soon as they become liable.

However, given the history of US environmental regulation, the power of commercial lobbies and the recent SCOTUS decision on the ability of government agencies to regulate, I wouldn't expect anything to happen soon; probably not until there are civil claims that force changes.

LibreOffice 24.8: Handy even if you're happy with Microsoft

Outline mode is really for those who want to structure without styles. You move up and down the structure using tabs and this means you can worry about the styling (and the awful mess that Word can make with it) later.

I do agree with you that "paste text only" should be the default but, as in so many things, it looks like the colour pencil brigade got what they wanted and I think this has been Microsoft's strategy for about the last 30 years: Word 2.0 was pretty solid and came with an excellent tutorial about structuring documents and content first and worry about making things pretty later. Needless to say the tutuorial was missing from the next version (Word 6.0) which was the first to contain so many things you didn't need, that menus needed to be edited. And it came with Clippy… Nuff said!

Re: If only there was a replacement for outlook...

Outlook has to be one of the worst e-mail clients out there but there are replacements; you might want to give a Open XChange a look. Then again, if you're wanting to stick with Windows365, then I think you may be beyond help! ;-)

While I'd agree with you in general, I think it's a massive omission that LO doesn't have an outline view like word.

Broadcom promised to reform VMware so it enables better hybrid clouds. Will it deliver?

Re: "Where is the value in moving to an equivalent?"

You have to consider the costs of migration. VMWare is obviously hoping this is going to keep more customers with them longer.

Anyone who stays is an idiot

VMWare might think they've got away with this but as soon as one customer moves, others will follow. It takes a while to come up with a migration plan, test, validate and then do it. But if it works, everyone else will want to do it and it's a part of the stack where there's a lot of exchange between developers and system admins.

Under pressure from Europe, Apple makes iOS browser options bit more reasonable

Re: Groan

Apple generally gets a lot of things right – sensible defaults – but not everything, particularly when it comes to security. And the fact that there is no a setting for ad permissions suggests that things may change at any time.

My own anecdotal survey suggests that there is little difference between Android and IOS for the less technically literate. I know plenty of older people who are whizzes on Android phones, at least when it comes to taking pictures and using chat apps. And I know people with I-Phones who can't get it to use wifi easily. I have a friend of long-standing who went Apple for everything and still complains about the many restrictions he faces and the almost inevitable serial and expensive updates when Apple bring out new versions.

Just because you think things are okay, doesn't mean they are. You go on to conflate completely different legal cases: Epic has indeed taken Apple to court over the AppStore and is well within its right to do so: as a monopoly Apple has been free to set an exorbitant rate of commission. But the browser choice and other app choices are brought by consumer advocacy groups. Apple's justification for the restrictions over which preinstalled applications could be replaced was always a figleaf for truely anti-competitive behaviour, and it's good that this is finally being rolled back. Apple largely stopped work on Safari years ago and has been preventing users from some of the significant improvements in other browsers as a result.

Let's hope other jurisdictions decide to follow the EU's lead and force Apple to play fairly.

BOFH: Videoconferencing for special dummies

So true to life

We had to install tamperproof USB and network cables because they were rountinely removed and incorrectly installed (probably attempted to connect USB cables to ethernet ports…, or worse). And, yes, if a cable can be laid in a way that someone can trip over it, it will.

But the worst thing was installing some Microsoft Surface hubs…, apart from the cost – a company car – they're absolute pigs to work with! I think we had to setup a subdomain so that the screens could go online or do screen-sharing and we're not a W365 company. The accounts like to reset themselves every few weeks!

Oh, we also had an auth failure on the company wifi with the machines blithely ignoring the expired certificates even though they had been replaced weeks before with new ones… so now we're preparing some backup switches just in case (the new certs don't expire before 2040…) and I'm not sure whether I should allow the idiots coloured crayon kids connect the cables themselves or use tamperproof, which would mean unsightly but inviting cables on the tables… If it's not one thing then it's another.

Microsoft to stop telling investors about peformance of server products

Re: "M356 Consumer"

I also like the fact, that everything is cloudy now.

If you thought setting up Windows 11 without a network and, therefore, without a luvverly Micrsoft account was hard, you ain't seen nothing yet.

I'm afraid I can't let you do that, Dan.

Microsoft sends Windows Control Panel to tech graveyard

Re: cue the wailing

Fecking useful for things like setting up Exchange accounts that are not on W365 ever since MS defunctioned Outlook.

Atlassian CEO's idea to build 4,000-kilometer extension cord plugged in

Re: Quelle horreur!

quel horreur – it's masculine

Re: Sun to plant to oil to power

Solar energy production is not free, which is why, for example, it's cheaper to make hydrogen from natural gas than it is from electrolysis using solar derived electricity.

Re: Solutionism at its worst

More difficult than wanting to rely on a single, extremely long connection to an intermittent supply? As I said, it's possible that Singapore can supply much of its power needs in other ways but some kind of regional power grid is inevitable.

Solutionism at its worst

Instead of proposing a large-scale syn-fuel plant that could produce synthetic hydrocarbons for energy storage and trade, potentially below market rates, magical thinking is used to propose a technically far more demanding project with am uncertain outlook. It's so revolutionary that it will need massive government subsidies to succeed.

Singapore probably can't produce all its power from solar parks, but it can probably rely on off-shore wind for most of the rest: its latitude means it's unlikely to need to worry about a dunkelflaute in winter. In addition, it can easily partner with Malaysia for additional resources. Or, it could go for a single and very long connection to an intermittent source…

UK tech pioneer Mike Lynch dead at 59

The "lighter than water" stuff in the hold is what keeps them afloat.

Where's the Archimedes icon when you need it?

Making money certainly doesn't make you a good person, but it doesn't mean you're evil either.

I think the obituary makes clear that Lynch was a gifted person who was successful largely due to his own work. Yes, he and others made a packet selling Autonomy to HP, but this was (and probably still is) par for the course for the industry: HP wanted to expand into services and was determined to by Autonomy at any price.

The mediterranean sea is hotter this year than it has ever been and this has led to massive storms at virtually no notice all over the western and central parts.

It's difficult not to accept the death's as coincidence but, in the absence of a trail, I think it's probably best to,

Microsoft rolls out one Teams app to rule them all

There's no reason to use it for personal stuff and I won't install it on my personal phone, which is what Microsoft really wants it to do.

I hate pretty much everything about Teams but have to use it for some projects. And there are times when for things like support, I need it, so it will be good to have the option to use a separate account for that.

Juice probe scores epic fuel save after snapping selfies with Earth and Moon

Re: If we had the power

More rapidly than what?

Re: Excellent

I understand the relationship between the fuel saved and the mass of the craft itself, but was thinking more about the total mass of the system that launched it, which dominates initial propulsion calculations, and why the 150 kg fuel was replaced by scientific kit.

As I said, I think the main innovation may well turn out to be the ability to use non-propulsive means to accelerate craft.

Re: Gravity?

So, how is the acceleration applied then?

Excellent

While, given the scope of the mission, the 150 kg savings might be considered fairly small, it does mean the mission payload can larger and heavier. But I reckon the real win is the ability to do this, and possibly even more intricate gravity assists in future missions to get to places both faster and with less fuel than had previously been considered essential.

SpaceX set to surpass Gemini 11's altitude record with Polaris Dawn mission

Re: Bad choice of comparison

That's because it is. There was some adjustments in the software and control systems to make the MAX fly like a 737 so that certification would be quicker and cheaper… I understand (but could easily be wrong) that since the "unfortunate and tragic accidents that no one could have expected" the customisations have been removed and pilots have to learn to fly the new plane.