Posts by Charlie Clark

Germany formally drops ‘treason’ case against Netzpolitik journos

The German justice ministry has formally announced the end of a treason investigation aimed at two journalists.

Nope, it wasn't ministry but the Office of the Attorney General based on research done by the ministry.

Yes, it is an explicitly political office related to how the Nazis were able to seize power because the mainstream didn't do enough to stop them.

You get a better gist of the meaning with something like "Office for the Defence of the Realm".

Opera Software asks fat lady to stay schtum for a bit, but keep humming

Re: says

@moiety

You can actually use extensions. Currently you have to download them (for me on MacOS from the Opera store), unzip and import them. Unfortunately, I haven't managed to have them survive browser sessions for some reason but it's a while since I tried it.

Don't customers come first?

Sure, but who were the customers? All those people using the browser for free? For a while Opera seemed to have cornered the embedded and mobile (low memory, low bandwidth) market. But in the meantime with things like AndroidTV, Chromecast and UC Browser have come to the market.

Along with the technical difficulties of playing catch-up with Presto, Opera wasn't making a lot of money from the browser. There were differences of opinion in the board as to the best way to run the company and as a result Jon von Tzetchner left (he's now with Vivaldi).

I, too, think they through the baby out with the bathwater with Opera 15. Using it for the first time felt very much like a slap in the face. The mobile version continues to do well, though I ditched it because I couldn't use an ad-blocker. On the desktop it's definitely lost differentiating features.

Re: figures

Opera makes money from selling its embedded browser and proxy solutions to OEMs.

Presto was killed because Opera couldn't keep up with the pace of development. As a long-time user of Opera I wasn't happy with the decision but I could understand it. Given the small size of the company it's making a reasonable profit, though how much of that is from software sales and how much is from search engine referrals is unknown.

What I couldn't understand was some of the decisions taken when they launched the Blink-based browser: no bookmark manager and lots of fluff like "Discover". It's still my main browser and I'm dependent upon the mail client but I'm closely following Vivaldi which is being developed in the spirit of the old Opera. It's far from perfect – somehow keeps forgetting the extensions I install – but the intention is clear: create a browser for power users. The intended market for the blink-based Opera is still unclear, to me at least.

More recently: Opera closed all development in Oslo. Some ex-Opera developers are now working on Vivaldi which bodes well for it, I hope.

Big, ugly, heavy laptops are surprise PC sales sweet spot

Re: High spec Luggables are still too expensive

They can do, but the spec is then massively past any Apple laptop.

I don't really think the article has anything to do with the Apple at all: it's just clickbait. I don't know anyone going from an MacBook Pro to an HP or a Thinkpad but I do know a few going the other way (mainly down to the poor quality of the Linux drivers).

While there is no doubt about a market for MBP's which can take say 64GB of RAM, most people are happy enough with 16GB and a big SSD. That will let you run a heap of VMs and some form of CI for web or app work. Not necessarily suitable for modelling the weather or crunching wind tunnel data.

As you say, there are other areas where the cost of the hardware pales in comparison with the cost of the software and developer time.

Testing Motorola's Moto G third-gen mobe: Is it still king of the hill?

Re: Inflation

The pound has risen quite a bit since then though.

The dollar has risen more in the same time.

German prosecutor given Das Boot over Netzpolitik treason charge

The official status of the investigation is still not clear.

It's officially on hold pending review. This has been a bit of an omnishambles. The secret service reports to the interior ministry and named the journalists in the initial request for investigation. The Chief Prosecutor didn't really have much choice but to do some kind of preliminary investigation, though he should have dropped it quickly due to the special protection that journalists enjoy in these cases, and also because of the fact that he was so obviously being set up. Getting fired was the best way for a quick exit (at 67 he's past retirement anyway).

The justice ministry was also in a bind as direct political interference "drop the case" would call the independence of the judiciary into question. But it did express scepticism that the case was unwarranted and the cabinet office was quick to support the view.

The case is very much one of wheels within wheels with the secret service more than a little pissed off at having its right to spy curtailed by pesky journalists and do-gooders. Range's previous decision not to pursue espionage against the Chancellor and the contortions the NSA committee is having to go through to get information are indicative of what is going on behind the scenes.

This looks like a goal for the justice ministry but only once we know how the new Chief Prosecutor behaves, will really be able to call this one.

Intel doubles its bounty for women and ethnic minorities

Re: Don't believe the hype.

Fine. Targets then. Same shit, just technically one is non-binding policy and the other is. Doesn't matter.

It makes a huge difference. One is fluffy PR that doesn't cost much but keeps the company in the headlines for the right reasons. The other is an official policy with potentially very expensive consequences and could soon have the company in the headline for the wrong reasons.

Re: Reverse Discrimination

The left perpetuates the myth that without quotas no one has an opportunity to work as a minority.

Apart from this, and I hate to admit it, I agree with you whole-heartedly. ;-)

America's two-party system does not really produce a "left" and a "right" but different coalitions of vested interests. For a European the union's demands for a "closed shop" (everyone must join the union) is as incomprehensible as the "right to work" states (unions are not welcome). Rinse and repeat for most other bits of legislation.

It's perfectly legal to provide additional incentives for head-hunters to try and get more of whichever group to apply for jobs. Discrimination only occurs when handing out the contracts.

Re: Questions

meet their quotas

What quotas? Quotas would be illegal.

Anyway, when you see the sums in relation to turnover, it's obvious that these are PR exercises. Want more female black latino engineers? Get them to study engineering at university: Intel could fund some endowments. You can only employ what the market provides.

Or looked at another way: how much of the USD 1 bn that Microsoft is reportedly stumping up for a crumb of Uber is going towards increasing diversity there and how much is being trousered according to some clever post-JOBS act accounting?

Mac fans! Don't run any old guff from the web: Malware spotted exploiting OS X root bug

Re: I miss Steve

Apple still released buggy products while Steve was at the helm. In fact every release since Snow Leopard has had some howlers. Yosemite is relatively stable by comparison.

Want to avoid a hangover? DRINK MORE, say boffins

Re: Peachy juice

Fruit juice will usually help you get over a night's overindulgence. Helps the body replace vitamins and minerals leeched by the alcohol.

Re: No.

Sadly? doesn't work for me. But I wholeheartedly support your grant application!

OFFICIAL SCIENCE: Men are freezing women out of the workplace

Re: Temp difference also matters

Below 20°C is going to be too cold for office work for most people. It's the typical kind of arrangement where the needs of the equipment are considered more important than those operating them.

Preferred temperature

25°C (77°F) verses 22°C(spelling of versus is the author's)

I doubt very much that there is a three degree differential for similarly clothed people. 25°C is almost certainly uncomfortably warm for both men and women at work. Women do tend to feel the cold more, partly down to what they're wearing – bare ankles will make you feel the cold faster – and partly down to physiological factors such as muscle mass and the way subcutaneous fat is distributed. The amount you move makes a big difference. Walk around for 5 minutes every hour and you'll probably be able to knock 1°C off the thermostat.

One solution that has been touted is mini IR heaters for individuals: http://www.economist.com/news/technology-quarterly/21615065-one-way-keep-warm-heat-people-rather-expending-energy-heating

Nokia sells HERE maps to Audi, Daimler and BMW for €2.8 billion

Re: What about other manufacturers?

It's unlikely that they will be shut out of licensing the data as that could annoy the competition authorities a lot. They will presumably still be able to license the service. It's not a huge differentiator for car-makers, otherwise hard to imagine them clubbing together to buy it, more of a defensive purchase to keep something that might otherwise end up in Silicon Valley's hands (my enemy's enemy is my friend).

Detroit is also finally waking up to the threat.

Re: "Microsoft ... left HERE behind as it already had its own Bing Maps."

Considering how much Ballmer was allowed to throw at Nokia: "have some more money" I suspect it may simply have been the conviction that such a service was only "months away" in Bing so why bothering buying it? Or maybe they realised quite how much work is involved in keeping maps up to date?

Re: Swarm intelligence ?

Is it even possible to respect one's privacy when basically broadcasting one's position continuously ?

Good question but a car is far more anonymous than the various bits of electronic kit that we all carry around with us that do much the same.

The data collection will be subject to the reasonably strict German data protection laws and we can also assume that the competition authorities will also keep an eye on the purchase. Nothing to stop the three offering sweeteners to be able to collect less anonymous data but they won't do it as a matter of course.

Re: Massive write down?

Write-down is less than you think. El Reg's lazy/incompetent, let's be charitable and call them lazy, failed to convert the purchase price into Euros based on the exchange rate at the time. At the time of the purchase (November 2007) the exchange rate was about 1.45 Dollars to the Euro which puts the purchase price at about € 5.6 bn. This puts the write-down at less than € 3 bn.

The division has always been in profit and we can assume some of the money that Nokia got from Microsoft including long-term licensing for Here for the phones. So, all-in-all probably not such a bad deal considering that many considered the purchase price too high at the time.

BOFH: My diary is MINE and mine alone, you petty HR gimps

It was the terminal equivalent of the iPhone upgrade experience.

So true…

Have another one of these, you deserve it!

Americans care more about EU data protection laws than the French

The data protection watchdog has no formal role in the so-called trialogue negotiations (three-way talks between the EU Commish, Parl and Council)

It's sad to see El Reg turn into a kind of step-sister of the Daily Mail. You can't have trialogue negotiations. You could at a pinch call a conversation between three parties a "trialogue" but where's the value (apart from the neologism)? Much simple to say "tripartite negotiations" or "three-party negotiations".

As for "Commish" and "Parl", I guess it might be slightly amusing after a couple of drinks. But then why not go the whole hog and refer to the European Council as "Cunny"? No, it isn't really very funny is it.

The real story is how poorly funded and resourced the various data protection offices are especially in comparison to the multiple secret police that governments seem so keen on. Spying on the public is obviously the best way of protecting it.

Google turns cookie monster on AdSense, DoubleClick clients

Re: Google should stop passing the buck, and support Do Not Track

Do Not Track Does Not Work.

Re: Cookies now non negotiable...

The law already makes a clear distinction between cookies that are necessary, because they provide state and for which consent isn't required, and ones that aren't necessary, such as ads, which do. Any web developer worth their salt knows the difference.

And on that bombshell: Top Gear's Clarkson to reappear on Amazon

Re: In other news...

Have an upvote

What can't sell Galaxy S6s and keeps going down on you? Samsung and its profits

I've had four Samsung phones and they've all been solid: three of those were AMOLED. My Galaxy Tab 8.9 from 2011 is still going strong.

Support for a lot of companies is shitty because it's off-loaded to third-parties often on fixed contacts. Better customer service is one of the things you can expect when you pay the Apple premium.

They thought people would like the phone but more would buy the cheaper model. Turns out that the Edge appeals to more people than they expected so they've sold more of the higher margin version. Total sales may be down a bit but a profit is a profit. I know a couple with the Edge and they love it.

At the moment, however, profits for any company with large sales in Europe around 15% down to to the Dollar/Euro exchange rate.

Record-breaking $502m in sales, BIG LOSSES – OF COURSE IT'S TWITTER

Re: AMD

Below cost? I don't believe a word of it. For the last few months now I've been avoiding Amazon and finding other places to buy stuff ... and reputable, long standing small companies are coming in cheaper than Amazon.

The appeal of Amazon appears to be convenience and laziness. You've always been able to find cheaper/better products elsewhere but, like a supermarket, Amazon appears to offer everything in one place. Doesn't work for me but obviously does for many others and this, along with questionable employment and accounting practices, is slowly driving the competition out of business.

Re: Twitter is the next Amazon

Just imagine if the two got together? A marriage made in heaven!

Actually, that's a bit unfair on Amazon. Bezos has always been clear about spending any money the company makes on new stuff. Shareholders have so far been content to accept an increasing share price instead of dividends and Amazon does have things to show: AWS, Kindle, etc. I fully expect the shop and warehouse business to be split off at some point.

Re: Sales?

And, perhaps more worringly, too whom? Hands up anyone with a company who's spent money advertising on Twitter?

Debian Project holds Sparc port's hand, switches off life support

Re: Alternatives?

And there is OpenSolaris in its various guises. Wonder if Linux was ever really popular on SPARC.

Got an Android phone? SMASH IT with a hammer – and do it NOW

Carriers monkey with the OS/apps, then the carriers should fix them. It is high time that the law treats this sort of thing as a fault to be fixed for, say, 5 years after last sale. For everyone, so no supplier can wriggle out and not have to pony up to fix the damn software.

Five years is excessive. I'm not sure if the length of the warranty is really the problem. As you point out there are a lot of parties involved in any rollout. The law should be used to streamline the distribution of security patches. The threat of legal action backed up with stiff penalties can work wonders.

This might be good in getting the carriers out of the mix, to which they add so little. Manufacturers might also be forced to pool resources for development or otherwise face a levy to a statutory body.

Some thought would be need to given to older hardware which is no longer able to support the latest version of an OS. Backporting will only work so for so long. Might have to introduce official restrictions on older hardware. It's not really that different to phasing out things like analogue mobile phones. Carriers should be able to enforce this.

Just some ideas.

Re: Meep.

With them you're getting updates for a 4 year old device, but in world of premium android you seem to get a "gentleman's agreement" on 2 years, and then you're on your own.

That's the legal requirement in the EU. Some of this stuff simply needs challenging in the courts.

Things are often complicated by carriers running their own shit on top of the manufacturers' shit making which makes development and test take a lot longer. But some court rulings could really help in establishing the various degrees of liability.

Apple's support is great as far as it goes. Anecdotally, however, I've been told that after about 3 years performance on the latest IOS seems to be so poor that new hardware is best solution. And app devs on IOS seem to march in lockstep with the IOS versions, meaning that OS upgrades are often required if you want to use the latest version of an app.

There's less variance in phone hardware than there is on your average PC

That simply isn't true. The lack of an ISA (industry standard architecture) has led to a raft of proprietary SoC's that all do things differently.

Re: Tightwads

How much, in your opinion, should they have paid? Should we really be encouraging a market for the reporting of bugs?

It is very important for companies like Google to reward such contributions appropriately. But the incentives need to be correctly aligned.

Hurrah! Windfarms produce whopping one per cent of EU energy

Re: Why's this a story?

To the "let's all go nucular!" folks: How many years ago did France buy much electricity from Grumpenland (Solar, in winter!) because their reactors had to stop as the rivers were frozen?

To be fair France tends to buy more from Germany in hot, dry summers as the rivers get hotter and are less effective at cooling the nuclear plants. It generally exports to Germany in Winter when it is colder and darker.

Nuclear is a _transitional_ technology, as remarked by A. Merkel (btw. she is a physicist IIRC).

She also infamously compared it to baking once…

The knee-jerk response post-Fukushima was as politically astute as it was economically inept. It came hard on the heels of extensions to nuclear plant lifetimes with attendant contracts that are now being used in the courts to assess compensation. That volte-face may turn out to have saved her career as six months previously she had ignored Röttgen's advice not to go back to nuclear.

Of course, since then she's had her foot firmly on the brake when it comes to lower vehicle emissions.

Spoilsport! ;-)

Re: your forgot a bit

Well, I hear the Saudis are pumping like crazy to keep the price down (for not entirely clear reasons.

They're pumping to keep market share. The basic logic is to try and force American shale oil out of the business. Hasn't worked so far.

I am slightly worried about what they might do to prevent sanctions against Iran from being lifted as everything now points to fat pipelines from Iran to Europe, China and India.

Re: dealing with waste from nuclear power

New reactor designs are slated to totally eliminate waste storage by milking existing nuclear waste for all it's got.

1980 called and wants its headline back.

Nuclear has been over-promising and under-delivering from the start. In the process it's hoovered up more subsidies than the renewable lobby will ever do. Is that Finnish plant online yet? Did the UK government really have to promise a fixed profit level for its next plant?

Renewables are doing just fine. The problem is a lack of storage that can be replace backup generation capacity.

So what the BLINKING BONKERS has gone wrong in the eurozone?

Re: The 1930s

I await your detailed takedown so I can assess it.

I kind of walked into that one. Well, I won't give you one mainly because this is mainly a tech site, but I also don't have time for the details.

Suffice it to say that economics is far more politics than it is science, and a "dismal science" at that. My politics are profoundly different to Mr Worstall's: I'm a proud European and he's an insular (ex-pat, I believe). So we are bound to start from different positions and come to different conclusions. I can live with a difference of opinion but do get annoyed by the populist oversimplifications.

Germany didn't bail out its banks more than Britain. You can see the scale of the UK bailout in the public deficit after the financial crisis. Any comparison of the economies should have a baseline in 2008. From 2008 to 2012 Britain managed to shrink its economy and keep inflation above target, leading to a decline in the real standard of living. It's okay though, because nominal asset values were maintained.

When it comes to bullying other economies. Well, people in glass houses shouldn't throw stones. The UK applied enormous pressure to Ireland to bailout its banks and thus avoid British banks taken the hit of the bad loans. It then applied anti-terrorist legislation to seize Icelandic assets from banks that had been correctly licensed in the UK. The hawkish head of the FCA has just been told that his contract won't be renewed so it looks like a return to "light-touch", risk-on regulation. Given that the finance sector was contributing around 25% of GDP before the crash, you can see where the incentive to do this might be coming from.

Germany was one of the fastest countries to be fiscally expansive with the stupid-but-popular cash-for-clunkers scheme. State-subsidised shorter working hours were also hugely popular and are again with Opel recently applying for them now that the Russian market has collapsed. German banks were certainly complicit in stoking Greece's insolvency and the arms manufacturers certainly did a roaring trade, but no more so than any other country.

Translating "Ordnungspolitik" with ordoliberalism is fashionable but wrong. The German post-War political order was largely imposed by the allies so any thoughts of peculiar German traits are misplaced. It is the government's job to create the relevant institutions to manage the various sectors. Afterwards the government is legally prevented from meddling. This is one of the reasons why the Bundesbank is more independent than the Federal Reserve, the other being that the Federal Reserve is as beholden to the commercial banks as it is to the US government.

The hyperinflation of the 1920s is not etched in some kind of collective memory but it did illustrate the futility of getting the central bank to monetise government debt by printing money. This is why there is little desire or understanding in Germany for money printing as a solution. Whether QE has been a success or not can only properly be assessed once the central banks have managed to shrink their balance sheets. Little evidence of that at the moment.

Austerity is much misused word. In the early 2000s Germany certainly engaged in restraint across government and business in order to regain competitive advantage lost by the 1:1 exchange rate of unification. The labour market was significantly liberalised and wage restraint was exercised with annual pay increases well below the rate of inflation the norm for about 10 years. Similar adjustments were, of course, practised by the Baltic countries after-2008 as they strove to join the Euro.

Some of the consequences of this were the nearly disastrous falls in productivity in other Eurozone countries and the export of German savings into high-risk, high-return investments such as American CDOs and Greek bonds. Other consequences such as underfunding of healthcare and pensions will take time to show.

All the historical comparisons with the Great Depression, Hitler's rise to power, etc. can be illuminating but are necessarily simplistic. The 1930s were extremely unstable across Europe which is why Ramsay MacDonald imposed a state of emergency in 1931. This is quite simply not the case today. Not that there isn't considerable hardship throughout Europe but the scale is very different.

Where I do agree is that the Euro is unfinished business. Since its introduction the member states largely turned inwards and tried to ignore the consequences of pooling sovereignty. France is the elephant in the room here with successive governments simply failing to start the same kind of dialogue with the population that Germany did in 2001. It simply is not enough to look covetously at the situation "outre-rhin" and expect some kind of a miracle.

Re: Germany really doesn't believe the last 60 years

But ten years ago, while the French and Luxembourg shops all accepted Visa and Mastercard, German shops held steadfastly on to cash only.

It might interest you to know that the number of credit cards in Germany peaked about 10 years ago and has been decreasing since. Why? Because the transaction charges of around 4% are not negligible. Where credit card are accepted, it's not unusual to ask for or be offered a discount if you pay cash or use your EC card. Try it the next time you go shopping in Germany.

Credit cards are common in the travel industry but even then you may see surcharges for credit cards (increasingly common when booking flights).

Re: The 1930s

Is it just me or are Tim's articles getting really good these days? I've gone from being a bit dismissive to being very appreciative.

It's you. There's a bit more history in this one but it's still full of the usual strawmen and incomplete arguments.

Ballmer's billion-dollar blunders: When he gambled Microsoft's money and lost

ODF is the death knell of Microsoft. If Microsoft cannot hold its customers to Office format, then any office suite will do - and Libre Office is free and Open Source.

Bollocks to that. FWIW Office OpenXML is just as open as ODF. It may be shit but it is open.

Re: Don't be scared to fail

This is something that the US seems to accept much more easily than in the UK

The bankruptcy laws have a lot to do with that. In the US if you fail bad there's little to stop you walking away from the debt and starting all over again. There are attendant tax-breaks for those lending the money so venture capital is far less risky than it might appear.

Re: In fairness to Ballmer

All good except for this:

Linux also brought a threat to the client end with a competent desktop which just needs an ecosystem.

It still ain't happening for Linux outside Android.

My guess is that Windows 8 itself probably didn't cost a great deal of revenue directly. In the consumer space the move towards handhelds was already underway. Enterprise customers had already generally said: no thanks, we're still busy with Windows 7. Yes, it was a PR fuckup, but if you look at the EBITDA since then it's been steady.

In much the same way that the Vista fiasco led to a concentration of minds and a thoroughly reasonable Windows 7, Windows 8 is leading towards Windows 10. The OS available on release date is probably less important than many of us imagine. More important is the general shift at Microsoft towards services and also acknowledging that "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em" with Office and Cortana for Android and IOS. Windows 10 may just end up being one way of getting those services into people's hands.

Re: To paraphrase Reagan...

Yeah, they're still sitting on the goodwill. Wonder when their "corrections" are coming. MS was bidding against itself for Skype!

Google: Hey startups, want in on our patent gang? First hit's free

Re: How is this protection against patent trolls?

Microsoft isn't a patent troll, not by the true definition

What is the true definition? I'd define a patent troll as anyone attempting to use patents to prevent innovation, which is the opposite of what they're supposed to be for. Unisys' waving of the LZW patent falls into this category along with Microsoft's always out-of-court settlements about FAT and Apple's "rubber band" patent.

Revenues of $500,000 would imply a workforce of less than 10 people. That seems a reasonable definition of a startup to me.

Re: How is this protection against patent trolls?

The protection against trolls works in two ways: firstly, the pool will be able to act for any member that is challenged (think of Microsoft's dubious cases about FAT); secondly, over time the patents of companies that join will not become available to trolls for future abuse because they're already cross-licensed.