* Posts by Charlie Clark

12110 publicly visible posts • joined 16 Apr 2007

Google, Qualcomm team up to make long-term Android updates easier on Snapdragon

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Re: The 1980s called and want their software development practices back.

This is basically what Project Treble did. However, the SoC part remains non-trivial, while margins remain slender.

GitHub will no longer present a cookie notification banner – because it's scrapping non-essential cookies

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Re: Cookieless tracking

Won't exempt you from GDPR. Even first party cookies are limited in scope and the any data collected is also covered so that if you do, for example, pass nicht anonymous logfiles to a third party for processing without both advising the user, and giving them the chance to opt out, having a suitable contract with that third party, then you are breaking law.

Charlie Clark Silver badge

The GitHub data collection isn't really about selling ads but selling information about developers.

Dutch officials say Donald Trump really did protect his Twitter account with MAGA2020! password

Charlie Clark Silver badge
Stop

Re: less than a month before no one has to care what appears on Trump’s Twitter feed ever again

Seems you didn't get to read to the end of the post.

As for taking money, I can't remember a US president who wasn't beholden to some interest or other.

How to leak data via Wi-Fi when there's no Wi-Fi chip: Boffin turns memory bus into covert data transmitter

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Re: Ever notice ...

And funding from the US DoD, which more many purposes needs plausible deniability when it comes to the rights of US citizens.

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Re: Ever notice ...

Depends on the task in hand. What you quite often want is someone to remove or plant something quickly. Cleaning staff and security are great for this kind of thing.

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Re: Ever notice ...

When it comes to espionage getting access to the hardware is considered sine qua non and in most situations it will be possible at some point. There was a point where the spooks were worried about mobile phones because the hardware is harder to compromise and thus subvert but they seem to have found since.

While attacks like this are impressive and make for great films, low-fi tech is often the weapon of choice because it's so reliable. And when it's not possible, bribery is usually a good alternative.

As UK breaks away from Europe, Facebook tells Brits: You'll all be Californians soon

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Not wanting to defend Facebook but…

I think this is an example of what's called "regulatory insecurity" where companies end up having to wing it. In absence of an agreement with the EU all existing agreements will lapse after 31st December meaning that Facebook Ireland will no longer be able to process data for UK citizens. The alternative of setting up a UK company for this purpose probably isn't possible so the UK gets the "WTO" treatment that many other countries will have.

Rinse and repeat for all regulatory requirements where the incorporated country is in the EU. This is why the EU is also offering the UK an arrangement for essential services in the event of a no-deal (personally, unless the transitional agreement is extended, I can't see being avoided) so that UK airlines can continue to fly into, out of and within the EU.

Oven ready indeed!

Up yours, Europe! Our 100% prime British broadband is cheaper than yours... but also slower and a bit of a rip-off

Charlie Clark Silver badge

I used to be with Unitymedia (now Vodafone) but switched earlier this year back to DSL, because it just kept having problems almost inherent in coax, with some numpty on the line sticking something on that buggers the RF up for everyone.

1 & 1 has been pretty reliable since and faster (100 Mb/s ~ 12 MB/s) for the same price. Interestingly, the LTE backup is one of the Vodafone Gigacubes so depends a lot on where the nearest tower is, but I know that they do still have a very good mobile network.

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Connecting individual properties is one thing, making the whole chain fast enough (DSLASM, backhaul, interconnects, etc.) quite another. It's the sort of thing that requires relatively expensive investments of the sort that the UK, with its preponderance for short term fixes, generally doesn't like.

My German LTE backup is faster and cheaper than the UK standard, albeit limited in volume.

BOFH: Switch off the building? Great idea, Boss

Charlie Clark Silver badge
Pint

Re: And not even an accident required

And the meeting was moved to neutral ground… the nearest pub. Where, after several rounds of foaming nutbrown "Opportunity in a Crisis" an amicable arrangement was met and the death certificate made out.

Charlie Clark Silver badge

And not even an accident required

The paramedics did their best but were delayed in getting there because the power cuts meant we couldn't call the emergency services until we knew all systems were restored…

World+dog share in collective panic attack as Google slides off the face of the internet

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Re: Try again *later*

Depending on the system, it's a reasonable approach because it acknowledges there is a problem and sets an expectation that the problem can be fixed soon — this is a much worse word to use — and that you should do something different for a couple of minutes rather than pressing refresh all the time.

A major outage like this can never be ruled out but should have some form of recovery plan. Individual plans for each system should also exist and are easier to test.

Google Cloud (over)Run: How a free trial experiment ended with a $72,000 bill overnight

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Re: VISA gift cards

Not really, they deployed untested code on a massively scalable system, which was what they wanted, and went to bed. While I think we've all learnt from leaving something running unattended, doing this with untested code is always asking for trouble.

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Re: VISA gift cards

The important thing is the credit limit because you hand over the risk to the card operator who also licences service provider to comply with such limits. Might be some clauses in the T&Cs (on both sides) to work around this, and checks by the service provider to such cards for precisely this reason. But still a good place to start.

But, basically, this is the business model of all cloud ("as a service provider"): get the user to pay more than they expected to. Once they've uploaded their data it's not as is they're likely to leave any time soon.

And, also, what were they thinking not to check for recursion / duplicates in the first place?

Back to the Fuchsia, part IV: Google's in-development OS now open to community contributions

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Re: "Google is well known for enthusing about projects and later abandoning them."

Their record in open source software is somewhat better, I think.

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Re: Whatever.

What have you got against competition? And the last time I checked, neither company provided completely open source offerings. Yes, there is Linux but I think there are both technical and legal reasons for wanting an alternative.

Oracle Database 21c bridges NoSQL gap with native JSON support, plays catch-up with relational rivals

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Sorry, what?

Meanwhile, MariaDB, which was sharded out of NoSQL after Oracle bought earlier custodian Sun Microsystems

Don't you mean forked from MySQL after Big Red bought the previous owner Sun?

Lenovo seeks to render Nokia's H.264 patents unenforceable, claims it misled standards bodies

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Re: How long do these kind of patents last?

25 years after registration in general so not relevant here. Things get more complicated with standards like H264 which are normally covered by a patent pool to prevent precisely this kind of case: manufacturers pay a single fee and are imdemnified. However, I don't know the details of this particular case but it is causing additional problems in the notebook channel.

Life after proprietary wares: German support biz flees IBM Db2 databases for something more Postgres-shaped

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Re: Single threaded writer

I'm sure pgloader runs copying in parallel, though this might of course be using processes rather than threads. Throughput is any case pretty impressive.

Charlie Clark Silver badge
Stop

Thanks for the advice, but repeated tests of LibreOffice have led to crashes so I'll still with the more stable OpenOffice, which has recently had a few patch releases.

Charlie Clark Silver badge

There's also a big difference in the user experience: users are usually far less senstive to the OS or server software than they are to a new brand (or even just a new version) of their desktop software. And, much as I like OpenOffice myself, it's difficult to argue that Microsoft hasn't learned some lessons and focussed on better versions of its office software.

When it comes to databases, I'm pretty sure the 80/20 rule would apply: 80% of any companies databases could run on pretty much any RDBMS; the other 20% might take some, or even a lot, of work.

Apple's M1: the fastest and bestest ever silicon = revolution? Nah, there's far more interesting stuff happening in tech that matters to everyone

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Re: Well...OK

Notebook vs 4U comparison will fail not least because of the display in the notebook.

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Re: Wow.

You're right nothing revolutionary but it's still bold and good luck to them. Google is the real loser here. If they weren't so obsessed with Chrome OS, we'd probably have had some for of Android on ARM for a couple of years. For many developers Apple has produced the most compelling notebook of the last ten years.

AWS Babelfish for PostgreSQL: A chance to slip the net of some SQL Server licensing costs?

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Re: Unless I 've misunderstood something...

Replacing Access with something less likely to give you deadlocks should be pretty easy as Access' SQL is pretty limited. Though, if you've managed to run stuff on the web for years, you obviously haven't run into Access' many limitations.

You will probably have more challenges with VB. In theory, any kind of ODBC driver should let you work with VB and you can probably compile the VB in to run on .NET core – Mono is really for GUI stuff and if it's a website you probably don't need that.

LibreOffice 7.1 beta boasts impressive range of features let down by a lack of polish and poor mobile efforts

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Re: "Across the free software world we have a problem in getting people to pay for things"

For companies, the costs for MS Office are reasonable. Okay, support is basically non-existent but the permanent access to updates will swing the deal for many beancounters. Whether people should be using Office as extensively as they do without relevant training is another matter.

The bigger problem, as I see it, is the loss of control and the risks associated with that as Microsoft are more or less forcing companies to give them their data. Oh, and Exchange and Outlook are a dreadful combination of productivity killers.

Charlie Clark Silver badge

LibreOffice has form in making buggy releases. For a while it's had different branches but I've never had a "stable" release that hasn't been buggy in some way.

Bixby users. Yes, both of you! Samsung's unloved voice assistant now works with its unloved DeX desktop mode

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Re: I have to ask...

I suspect more people like these "digital assistants" than we imagine. Personally, I don't and get annoyed every time I hit the key by accident when I'm trying to adjust the volume. It should be optional and the button could be better positioned but, in a sense, the more different providers there are, the better.

Charlie Clark Silver badge

I've used DeX while travelling: connect phone to hotel TV and Bluetooth keyboard and you can do a lot more than with just the phone.

OpenZFS v2.0.0 targets Linux and FreeBSD – shame about the Oracle licensing worries

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Re: "acting within the rights granted"

Why should it ever be in the kernel? Surely, it's always optional?

Take Note: Samsung said to be thinking about killing off Galaxy phablet series

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Re: That's annoying, I like the stylus

There's obviously still a market for them – 8 million units aren't to be sniffed at – but the difference between the Note and the other Galaxy's is much less marked. Doesn't mean they'll stop selling sensitive styluses, but these may just become accessories for the flagship.

Arm at 30: From Cambridge to the world, one plucky British startup changed everything

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Re: Who killed MIPS?

NT was cross-platform and very easy to port

That was the the idea but it was only really possible for low level parts of the system and nothing that relied on MFC. This why versions of NT for the Alpha were always late and why DEC also invested in providing x86 support on the chip.

Later on, things got even worse as the kernel was optimised for x86 quirks, which is why Microsoft struggled with the x86_64 transition and later with the move to ARM. It had a definite interest in supporting as few architectures as possible and Intel kept promising that the next generation of chips would be faster… But how much was really a plot and how much was just "stuff" we'll never know. In the end, a bit like VHS versus Beta or VESA local bus versus PCI, the better technology looks like it will win.

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Re: Who killed MIPS?

Itanium was HP's last throw of the dice. The real damage to alternative architectures had been done by Microsoft's shafting of Windows NT for the DEC Alpha. The Alpha was so much better than x86 at the time that Intel really was worried.

By the time it came to the Itanium fabs were getting so expensive and TSMC et al. weren't able to step in, that HP had no choice but to go with Intel, who managed to get enough IP out of the deal to stick in future less-x86 x86s.

Scotch eggs ascend to the 'substantial meal' pantheon as means to pop to pub for a pint during pernicious pandemic

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Re: Why do you need rules?

Yes, but they also have far higher mortality rates.

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Re: A soft-boiled scotch egg?

Very good nonsense if you ask me. Don't like hard yolks. For variety, if you're in Manchester, I can recommend the "Manchester Egg" which uses pickled eggs, which always have soft yolks, and black pudding.

Keep the hard-boiled ones for hurling at the clueless hordes of government ministers.

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Re: Why do you need rules?

Many people will suffer very little side-effects from the virus. Doesn't mean it isn't a serious illness, but it's not ebola or cholera.

PC makers warn of battle for air freight capacity, will have to fight for cargo space with... the COVID-19 vaccine

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Re: Excuses, excuses

Still more money from passengers. But most of the vaccines have localised production and distribution strategies, so this is probably just more FUD.

I recently got some LED bulbs from China via air freight and there was certainly no premium for those.

Salesforce reportedly poised to scoop Slack for billions

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Re: 21st century capitalism

Yes, there is a lot of money being thrown at this. But costs per treatment are very low – AstraZeneca's will be around $ 5 per treatment, or 1/1000th of those for Remdesivir. Compare that with the juicy recurrent returns for statins, etc. and it's easy to see why Big Pharma still doesn't like vaccines.

All the more credit to those companies like Biontech, Moderna and AstraZeneca, et al. for putting the work into platforms that allowed for the rapid development of vaccines and, even more importantly allow for production at scale. This goes back to the scares around the so-called avian and swine flu a decade ago and depends upon the continuous advances in DNA analysis and manipulation.

Charlie Clark Silver badge

IRC is older and still going strong.

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Re: 21st century capitalism

I wasn't going to mention vaccines but if you look at the list of companies with advanced phase 3 trials, you'll see Big Pfizer is largely conspicuous by its absence. Yes, Pfizer is there but that is because it partnered with BionTech, which actually did the research for the platform.

When it comes to dissing innovation, Big Pharma is probably worse than IT because of the even cosier relationship it has with regulators. Remember Remdesivir? $ 4500 a pop and now considered to have no significant benefits. Compare this with the out of patent dexamethasone and Astra Zeneca's proposed pricing $ 5 per vaccine and you can see why. Why take on the risk of developing something new at such low prices when you can buy a company that has a new heart pill ($00s per month), or cancer drug ($000000s per treatment)? This is also one of the main reasons why US healthcare is so expensive and has such poor outcomes: vaccines are socialist by definition.

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Re: Great... time to jump ship to Teams...

Sharepoint Chat is, as you say, a pile of poo but it ticks all the boxes and comes "free" with that Office 365 subscription the CIO just rubberstamped.

Really looking forward to group calls in Telegram as this could disrupt the market somewhat.

Charlie Clark Silver badge

21st century capitalism

Maybe Salesforce has just figured out it will be easier to buy than build?

Pretty much sums things up and is why US corporations have slashed R&D so much. Outsourcing product development like this is much more expensive even though Slack's revenues hardly justify it, but seeing as the money is largely being transferred between pension funds, no one really seems to care.

Gartner: You think Huawei's sales figures are bad now? Wait till you see next year's

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Re: 5G

The problem is that telco companies are luring people into contracts where they get a new phone every two years or so

That's been the model for years but is increasingly less the case as more and more users switch to SIM-only PAYG contracts, which are generally much cheaper and keep their "old" phones for longer, because they're generally still more than good enough.

5G was dreamt up by the networks in the hope that it would turbo charge the refresh cycle but this doesn't seem to be having that much effect. If you already have a good 4G signal, 5G doesn't offer very much and if you don't have a good 4G signal you almost certainly won't have a good 5G one!

Spending Review: We spy a stray £60m – is that all you can spare to help 5G market recover from UK kicking out Huawei?

Charlie Clark Silver badge
Stop

Re: What happened to 5G security being important?

5G has the same level of security as 4G, which is probably quite a bit above what most broadband has. All US network companies put backdoors in their kit when the NSA asks them to. But, so far, no one has been able to prove that Huawei does for the Chinese and they provide access to their kit and the source code.

Thought the M3 roadworks took a while? Five years on, Vivaldi opens up a technical preview of its email client

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Re: Fantastic

Thunderbird has got round to adding filters? It's even easier in Opera Mail and MailMate: click on address, rename, save and move to where you want it.

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Re: This is great

Yes, like so many things in Opera, the RSS reader just worked. On MacOS Vienna is a good alternative.

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Re: Fantastic

Looking forward to giving it a test myself, but at least for MacOS I can recommend MailMate as having many similar features as M2 so it becomes a doddle to write a filter to, say, delete all e-mail from mailing lists that are more than a month old and which you weren't involved in.

Considering the colonisation of Mars? Werner Herzog would like a word

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Re: There’s hope yet!

Electric motors, yes. Batteries less so. They're currently a subsidised way of making the middle class feel good about themselves.

It may date back to 1994 but there's no end in sight for the UK's Chief customs system as Brexit rules beckon

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Control is an illusion…

Taking it back, doubly so.

Charlie Clark Silver badge

Re: Still. The Farage Garage will be open for business on time.

Maggie's gambit actually caused more problems than it solved. It pushed many like-minded countries towards the federalists because that's how they could get most out of the situation. Once it became clear that the British approach would always be to demand an opt-out, the others simply engineered situations where making a small concession would keep the Brits happy, and the rest could do the horse-trading in peace. Game theory in practice, really.