YMMV, I'm currently planning the disposal of some underspecc'd notebooks bought in the pandemic rush. At the time there was a shortage of memory but that has fortunately passed now. Note, these are disposals without replacements. If and when we need new kit, we'll see what the market has to offer but memory, reliability and weight are more important for the vast majority of users than anything to do with AI.
Posts by Charlie Clark
12180 publicly visible posts • joined 16 Apr 2007
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Can AI shorten PC replacement cycles? Dell seems to think so
Microsoft license shuffle means Power Apps users could break the bank
In one of my current projects I've started getting notices from Microsoft that our Power Crapp Environment is running out of disk space. Not sure what it does, though it looks CRMy but it also looks like a solution looking for a problem, like so much of Microsoft's stack. I think the aim is to tick enough boxes so that people think they can use it instead of another solution and thereby put another nail in the lock-in coffin.
Whatever the problem, Sharepoint isn't the solution™.
Bernie Sanders clocks in with 4-day workweek bill thanks to AI and productivity tech
IBM CEO pay jumps 23% in 2023, average employee gets 7%
Google brains plumb depths of the uncanny valley with latest image-to-video tool
The end of classic Outlook for Windows is coming. Are you ready?
Re: POP3 is horrible
I've done a move painlessly between providers in the past: essentially you're just uploading a load of msgs to whatever format the server prefers. Depending on the volume of message and the size of your connection, this can take a while, but you can plan for it. Some providers also offer the option to migrate mail from the previous account, using the same mechanism but presumably faster.
POP3 is the older and simpler protocol but I do prefer IMAP and I prefer anything over the Microsoft's proprietary shit: MAPI, ActiveSync and the rest of the crap!
Microsoft forges One Teams App To Rule Them All
Re: "with separate icons on the taskbar"
I almost never use my camera and I usually disable incoming video feeds, but I'm sure it would probably crash that as well. This for two reasons: the fan starts whirring very quickly on my MacBook but I also find talking heads extremely distracting: I spend most of my time watching them rather than what is being discussed.
Leaked docs hint Google may use SiFive RISC-V cores in next-gen TPUs
Telegram eyes IPO as user numbers close in on 1 billion
Re: It's all downhill once the bankers turn up
For most of the time Durov was happy to pay for development and hosting out of his own pocket. It wasn't until the number of users spiked that hosting started getting, ahem, "webspensive", and he started looking for ways to cover some of the costs.
Telegram has two things that make it really attractive for many users outside the mainstream: it's very hard to block; and it scales really well. This is why it's so popular in Russia and Ukraine. There is also very little censorship, which can have positives and negatives, but groups generally manage to administer things pretty well. The API is also very interesting for developers, in fact, it's what other services might have looked like if they weren't interesting mainly in monetising their users. It's based in the UAE which keeps it out of the arms of many governments, but we'd be naive to think the UAE is magnificently impartial: it isn't and happy to fund freedom fighters / terrorists.
An IPO could be the deathknell for the system if it then becomes all about making money but the capital could also be used to guarantee costs.
Google searches for boss to get grip on climate, energy costs of this AI hype cycle
Re: Possibly good news
I don't think "AI" in general is the worry for networks. But for service providers like Google, they may be keenly aware of the marginal costs or "surge pricing" if they have to buy electricity to support workload spikes. Client-side inference uses a lot less power.
Energy utilities have bigger headaches like boosting generation and network capacity to support the switch to electrification for transport, heating, etc. They have, of course, traditionally profited from selling more power, but that's only once the capital costs of increasing capacity have been amortised.
Airbnb warns hosts who use indoor security cameras they may face eviction
Re: "where guests can reasonably expect privacy expectations"
The amount of privacy you enjoy will depend upon the laws of the relevant jurisdiction: more in Switzerland or Sweden, less so in America or China.
This is just a move to give AirBnB plausible deniability and indemnity in case someone thinks their privacy has been illegally invaded.
Securing open source software: Whose job is it, anyway?
Re: Contributing Back
No, we don't need to break the idea: open source is free without any kind of qualification.
But software development and maintenance isn't free and we might need to look at what kind of models we need to maintain a particular software ecosystem. Specifically if, as is long overdue, software liability becomes a real thing, how do we deal with this? If companies are selling products or services (using open source software) and can be held liable for problems arising with them, then they will be interested in ensuring the software is maintained and documented. I'd argue that the commercial pressure itself is likely to provide solutions.
Microsoft sends OneDrive URL upload feature to the cloud graveyard
BOFH: I get locked out, but I get in again
UK finance minister promises NHS £3.4B IT investment to unlock £35B savings
Don't believe the hype
This is just more "cutting waste" bullshit on steroids as the examples make clear. We've now got 40 years of IT to look back on and it's clear to most that, while productivity has increased, costs generally have not been reduced. When e-commerce was the next thing™ I remember someone from IBM sagely noting that, while it would improve processes, it probably wouldn't save costs. This was packaged up in the neat slogan "work smarter, not harder", which is one of the better ones of the last few decades.
Also, given the size of the NHS and proposed duration, this can't really count as investment. No, it'll probably just be the usual creative accounting with budgets for, I don't know, pandemic protection being run down or research projects not being renewed.
Belgian ale legend Duvel's brewery borked as ransomware halts production
EU users can't update 3rd party iOS apps if abroad too long
Re: I hope they get sued out of existance
Apple is actually being quite flexible and accommodating. Laws of the EU do not apply in other countries and they would be well within their rights to be more aggressive.
Not if they wish to continue trading in the EU they wouldn't. All companies wishing to trade in another country must be subject to its jurisdiction.
Re: Who are their lawyers?
Legally, there is no EU citizenship. We are all citizens of member states. The UK left and, yes, much to their surprise many UK citizens living in EU countries (Spain, France, Portugal, etc.) who hadn't bothered to apply for citizenship in their chosen country of residence, did lose the rights that they had previously held.
Re: Who are their lawyers?
Ah, extra-terratoritality.
GDPR explicility allows for extra-territoriality and is part of what is known as the "Brussels effect", which sees countries observing EU without being legally required to. But, in general, the EU, unlike the US, does not try and enforce its law outside its borders. However, your example is a poorly conceived strawman. A better example might refer to the rights of an EU citizen whilst in America, perhaps taking medication prescribed in their native country, though abortion would be unlikely. You have this in the US going from state to state sometimes between counties and bigger states, notably California and New York do indeed enjoy some degree of extra-territoriality.
Re: Who are their lawyers?
Competition law will apply to EU citizens but I suspect that, in practice as katrinab suggests, both apply for when phones are setup: I don't see US citizens suddenly seeing different options when they travel to the EU. But, as I said, it's easier enough to ask for guidance rather than making a criterium up that plainly won't stand legal challenge.
As for Apple being worried about pissing its customers, since when has that bothered them? Most of the fanbois seem happy for the opportunity to be abused and they more than cover the costs for the more recalcitrant ones.
Who are their lawyers?
"an indicator of eligibility"
This is typical of the tech companies thinking that even when they don't get to make the rules, they still get to decide how to interpret the them. However, as Apple lost the case, they are subject to the ruling, which applies to all EU citizens. And it is a right, and not something you have to earn or lose* as decided by a third party. Not doing this could be could be considered contempt, and I'm surprised their lawyers didn't quash this idea immediately to avoid additional difficulties. It would reasonable to ask how the European Commission how to determine this, though proof of id is possible in nealy all, if not all, EU member states, though it won't be that hard.
* It's virtually impossible within the EU to strip someone of their citzenship once granted, unless malice aforethough, fraud, etc. can be demonstrated.
Year of Linux on the desktop creeps closer as market share rises a little
Re: Repeat after me:
I don't think anyone is suggesting that any company implement everything themselves. There are some perfectly good alternative solutions for pretty much everything you list. Sharepoint itself is an abomination and horrible to work with just for sharing files. What does Active Directory do that something based on LDAP can't? And there are plenty of alternatives to Intune for device management.
I think the clients are key for user acceptance, but there are alternatives for many things: just look at how they manage with mobile devices.
I really am worried by the corporate march to M365 and the updated "nobody got sacked for buying IBM" approach. I am convinced that, as more and more stuff moves onto Microsoft's platform, the risks will just get bigger and we will see some catastrophic failures.
Re: "Statcounter says"
How representative are the most popular websites of overall website usage?
I think you've answered that yourself in what looks very much like a tautology! ;-) As I said, it's just another easily available dataset which could be used to assess any similar kind of report. Of course, it is itself biased as it relies on the Chrome browser so it will never pick up what the fanbois are doing.
The CDNs, which are generally mutually exclusive, have the advantage of not using third-party requests to collect the data.
Re: "Statcounter says"
It may not be biased in the political sense, but it's certainly not representative of the most popular websites. You could do a comparison of sites using the Chrome Lighthouse data to see how much overlap there is.
Akamai used to provide browser info and I suspect Cloudflare and other CDNs could do as well. I suspect any of these would be more representative of the most popular websites than statcounter.
Toyota, Samsung accelerate toward better EV batteries
Re: Seeing is believing
Toyota has invested heavily in Sodium-Ion batteries. These are heavier than Lithium but much, much cheaper and less risky. Whether they go into cars or other storage systems is moot as currently demand far exceeds supply. The Chinese have the greatest capacity here but there are others and, crucially, materials won't be the bottleneck.
However, I tend to agree with the 30% prediction. Toyota has been in his game long enough, far longer than most of the competition, to know that the drivetrain (electric motors) is more important than the energy storage system, which can stay oil-based until we have something with similar energy density and fuel fungibility so that refuelling isn't the next problem.
Twitter's ex-CEO, CFO, and managers sue Elon Musk for $128M
Re: Screw that
Employees? Probably. But investment? I'm sure there are still plenty of fanbois lining up shouting "Hey Elon! Have some more of our money! (Nod to a The Day Today sketch about a TV preacher convicted of embezzlement and "heinous parking", but I can't find the link…). But also, until there is proper governance between the various companies, investors keen to lend on A hoping to collect on B…
Re: Screw that
He should really have launched a suit himself alleging negligence and used that to beat down the settlement. If this goes to trial he'll lose and will face costs, and potentially additional damages, though I suspect the real loss will be to non-material things like the ability to get good staff and investment.
Rapid7 throws JetBrains under the bus for 'uncoordinated vulnerability disclosure'
Apple gets in on the AI PC hype, claims fanless M3 MacBook Air is fab for LLMs
I'd agree with you that in terms of the bottom line, the revenues are a rounding error.
Try and think of it like this, along with the high-margin, low-maitenance creatives that have tradionally regularly handed over cash, Macs are also needed to develop apps for the mobile devices: no developers, no apps.
EU takes a bite out of Apple with $2B in-app purchase fine
Re: 30% is just too much
I remember that discussions at the time compared the commission with that charged by resellers. But there are two important differences: the content is entirely digital and thus has much lower storage and distribution costs; the markets are essentially monopolies forcing publishers to pay the commission if they want to sell their wares. In an ideal world, competition between stores would help find the optimal level for commission, but, in it's absence, regulators must intervene.
German defense chat overheard by Russian eavesdroppers on Cisco's WebEx
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