Posts by Duncan Macdonald

While US ban hit Huawei and inventory overload clipped Apple, Samsung quietly stole smartphone market share back in Q2

Xiaomi

Xiaomi had the best percentage increase - and as their products are generally considerably cheaper than equivalent Samsung phones they could become a challenge to Samsung's dominance of the smartphone market.

Let's see what the sweet, kind, new Microsoft that everyone loves is up to. Ah yes, forcing more Office home users into annual subscriptions

Use LibreOffice instead

LibreOffice is in many respects equal to or better than MS Office and for the typical home user with only basic documents and simple spreadsheets is more than good enough. (LO is also better than MS Office for reading a number of MS Office documents as MSO often seems to have difficulty reading documents from different versions.)

Given that the price of LibreOffice is far lower than MS Office, for most users LibreOffice is by far the better choice.

Science and engineering hit worst as Euroboffins do a little Brexit of their own from British universities

Re: Well, you're leaving

After a hard Brexit Eu citizens in this county would only have the rights that the UK government was prepared to give them.

A simple possibility - working for the NHS or paying UK income tax at the time of the Brexit referendum - 5 year work visa with the possibility of exchanging EU citizenship for UK citizenship, all other EU citizens - 12 month tourist visa.

Very easy to determine eligibility for the work visa with these rules.

Pentagon makes case for Return of the JEDI: There's only one cloud biz that can do the job and it starts with an A (or rhymes with loft)

If they chose Oracle

Then the bill would probably end up at $100 billion not $10 billion.

How powerful are Russian hackers? One new law could transform global crime operations

Criminal VPN's ?

How difficult will it be for them to set up VPNs licensed by the Russian government on the understanding that they are only used to target the West ?

Side-splitting bulging batts, borked Wi-Fi... So, how's that Surface slab working out for you?

Re: 1 year warranty? I don't think so...

Agreed - the t-shirt will last longer :-))

Microsoft hikes cost of licensing its software on rival public clouds, introduces Azure 'Dedicated' Hosts

Re: $106k over three years

There are only 3 valid reasons for using "the cloud"

1) Web server if there is insufficient bandwidth available to company premises.

2) Short term peaks (under 3 months)

3) Keeping developers well away from live systems

For almost all other use cases, it will be cheaper to use own hardware. Try pricing the cost of a cloud service vs the cost of on site hardware before using any cloud service - you may be surprised at how few months it takes before the on site hardware is cheaper.

Another rewrite for 737 Max software as cosmic bit-flipping tests glitch out systems – report

Re: That trade war is going to bite them now..

If the testing is thorough then it could add years (not months) and require full redesign with proper redundancy (at least 3 active computers with voting) and full manual override capability. (The trim wheels should have a manual power assist so that the pilots do not need to be world class strongmen to operate them.)

Requiring pilots to have full type certification on the 737 Max 8 as it differs from previous 737s would also be nasty for Boeing.

Icon for what should happen to Boeing senior management ===============>

Trump continues on the warpath: Now US tariffs cover nearly everything arriving from China

Re: restriction on exports of rare earth materials

The correct thing to do is to restrict the exports of rare earth minerals until the US mines are nearly operational - then allow the supply to resume. This would cost the US miners a lot of money and make them very reluctant to compete with China in future.

As far as blacklisting goes - a simple one - make it known to airlines that the 737 Max 8 will not be permitted to fly over China (and possibly its allies) until a full aircraft certification has been done by China (no grandfathered certificates from previous 737's and no trust in any FAA certification). (Russia might go along with China in this action which would make the 737 Max 8 unusable by many airlines.)

Pi in the sky as ESA starts testing encrypted comms on International Space Station

Old technology

Early PROMS were very radiation resistant - (the structures were far bigger than current devices and used blown fuse technology - the SN54S473 had the grand total of 4k bits (512bytes!!) in a 20 pin DIL package). If they can still be obtained then they could be used to store multiple copies of the keys each with a checksum.

Get ready for a literal waiting list for European IPv4 addresses. And no jumping the line

IPv6 was designed by theorists

IF IPv6 had been designed by engineers - not theorists then it would have been a simple extension of IPv4 with a longer address field and all IPv4 addresses would be directly mapped to a (small) subset of the IPv6 address range. If this had been done then IPv6 would have been widely accepted many years ago.

Do NOT let theorists be in charge of DESIGN - leave that to engineers.

It's official: Deploying Facebook's 'Like' button on your website makes you a joint data slurper

Re: modern Internet

I use both NoScript and AdBlockPlus - both are needed. (Some sites do not work with AdBlockPlus alone as scripts check for the presence of ad blockers and disable the use of the site if detected - NoScript stops the detection of the ad blockers. )

With the exception of a few sites such as eBay for which JavaScript is necessary - if a site requires Javascript for browsing then I will not use it.

Disabling JavaScript also stops a large proportion of the malicious content on the internet from doing damage.

Re: No f in button?

Disabling Javascript is a necessity on most websites. Even ignoring the privacy implications, enabling Javascript allows a lot of unwanted ads to run. NoScript and AdBlockPlus (or equivalents) are requirements for sane use of the internet.

Meet the super-speedy white dwarf binary system that's going to grav-wave our world

Supernova ?

When the two merge will it trigger a supernova explosion? One of the causes for a type 1a supernova explosion is thought to be the merge of two white dwarf stars.

Icon for the effect ==================>

Just add water: Efficient Energy’s HFC-free chillers arrive in the UK

Re: What is the efficiency ?

Agreed - as the required final temperatures is well above freezing using chilled water inside the data center is the best approach. (Even better if the racks have built in cold water channels), Large quantities of ammonia (or most other refrigerants) are best kept outside where a leak is less of a problem. A leak on a chilled water line is less of a problem and cheaper to fix than a leak of any refrigerant gas.

What is the efficiency ?

Unless the efficiency at least matches conventional cooling systems then there is no point to these units. There are already refrigerants with low or zero global warming potential that are suitable for industrial use (eg ammonia).

Checkmate, Qualcomm: Apple in billion-dollar bid to gobble Intel’s 5G modem blueprints, staff – new claim

Is it worth the cost ?

One billion now - probably at least the same again in development costs to get a 5G modem that matches Qualcomm. Modems derived from the Intel technology would probably not make it into Apple phones before 2022. Is the cost of the Qualcomm modems high enough to make this cost worthwhile.

There is also a question - how many of the top designers left Intel when they announced that they were exiting the modem business?

You'll never guess what US mad lads Throwflame have strapped to a drone (clue: it does exactly what it says on the tin)

Rocket launcher

In WW2 a Piper Cub was fitted with 6 bazookas and used for anti armor attacks. Using a disposable launcher it should be possible to use the OG-7V or the PG-7VL warheads (normally used with the RPG-7) while only needing a 10lb payload capability.

Icon for the effect on the target ===============>

Re: The numbers don't add up...

Americans have fine maths skills due to their superb education system (/sarc)

Oh, lovely, a bipartisan election hack alert law bill for Mitch McConnell to feed into the shredder

Honest ?

No surprise that the top Republicans do not want honest elections. (See the many Diebold voting machines articles for more details of the "oh so good" election machines - and note that the company was a major Republican party supporter.)

Facebook and Max Schrems back in court again, both pissed off at Ireland's data regulator

Irish Data Protection Commission

Should be renamed as the Irish Data Do Nothing Commission.

Have they ever decided against data transfers out of europe ?

Their entire game plan seems to be "kick the complaints around until the complainers die of old age".

Years late to the SMB1-killing party, Samba finally dumps the unsafe file-sharing protocol version by default

Still available where needed

As some embedded systems use SMB1 it is reasonable for Samba to still have it available for those cases. Having it off by default makes good sense.

(Some embedded systems still use W95 or W98 - often with long lost source code so updating them to newer more secure protocols is not practical.)

Time to Ryzen shine, Intel: AMD has started shipping 7nm desktop CPUs like it's no big deal

Re: Spectre?

Yes - all the known attacks have been fixed or did not apply to AMD chips to start with.

Here's a great idea: Why don't we hardcode the same private key into all our smart home hubs?

Unfortunately I am not staggered

All too many companies outsource software development to the cheapest sweatshop that they can find - and a coder in India making less per day than a burger flipper makes per hour in the West has very little incentive to produce good code.

You know what's besides the XPoint, Intel? Somebody else's storage-class memory – SK Hynix

This will hurt Intel's profits

If Optane memory has to compete with storage class memory (SCM) from other suppliers then the price that Intel can charge will be limited.

Also as the other suppliers have no reason to limit their products to only Intel CPUs, we can expect to see SCM being available on AMD systems - removing another thing that Intel had hoped would be a competitive edge against AMD.

You're not Boeing to believe this, but... Another deadly 737 Max control bug found

China

If China wants to get back at the USA then an easy route for it would be to require full certification of the 737 Max 8 as a new aircraft in China before it is allowed to fly in China's airspace. Given how lax the FAA has been (because of low budget) requiring this certification to take place in China would be reasonable - and cripple Boeing (especially if other countries decided to follow suit).

The in and outs of Microsoft's new Windows Terminal

Leaving out the GUI

From the server does at least remove one potential cause of crashes.

The VT52 was a big improvement

Over the previous terminal - an ASR33 !!!

Mayday, mayday. Cray, you cray cray: Investor attempts to halt HPE's $1.3bn biz gobble

Re: Make or Break

Be fair - the Laserjet 4 was a robust brick that just kept on working. Even now 24 years after the model was discontinued working printers still turn up on eBay.

(However I doubt that any of the current HP management were involved in its development).

Summer's here, where's Windows 10 19H2? For Microsoft, spring ends whenever the heck it says so stop asking

Re: Obligatory Pedant

Spring is going to overflow - the While clause will not terminate - the time comparison needs to be in the While clause.

Correct coding

WHILE ((Windows != Done) && (DateTime.Now > Spring)) {++Spring;}

=================

++Pedant;

However as Windows is never Done - the first clause should be

(Windows != PretendToBeWorking)

After years of listening, we've heard not a single peep out of any aliens, say boffins. You think you can do better? OK, here's 1PB of signals

Re: Physics and Mathematics

The loss (in dB) should be about the same as the loss Voyager signals encounter going through the atmosphere in the other direction so the 6000x range increase still holds.

Re: Physics and Mathematics

Use a 250m disk (or bigger) or a large phased array - reducing the beamwidth from the 0.6 degrees of Voyager to 0.1 degrees has the same effect as raising the power in the beam by a factor of 36 - this coupled with a factor of over 1 million by replacing the 22.4 watt transmitter of Voyager with a 25MW transmitter on the ground gives an overall boost of over 36,000,000 times. With the inverse square law this gives a range increase of a factor of 6000. At a distance of 13ly (6000 times 20lh) the signal strength would be the same as earth receives from Voyager.

Re: Physics and Mathematics

As the signal from Voyager 1 with a 22.4 watt transmitter using a 3.7 meter diameter dish (0.6 degree beamwidth) can be read on earth at 20 light hours, it would be easily within current earth technology to produce a signal that could be read at 10 light years (and detectable for 100 light years) - a 25MW transmitter with a 0.1 degree beamwidth would suffice (and produce a higher signal at 10ly than Voyager 1 does at 20lh).

Re: A significant part of the problem

What intelligent species would want the average YouTube/Facebook/Twitter user posting on their internet ?

Ubuntu says i386 to be 86'd with Eoan 19.10 release: Ageing 32-bit x86 support will be ex-86

Early Atom netbooks

A number of Atom based netbooks are 32 bit only (often with under 2GB of RAM) - any that are still in use will need to chose a different distro.

Why are fervid Googlers making ad-blocker-breaking changes to Chrome? Because they created a monster – and are fighting to secure it

Re: The title is no longer required.

Easier option - virtual machine running an image of a Linux Live CD - no local storage - no shared folders. Start it up - access the dodgy site - close it down. With no access to persistent storage, any malicious scripts cannot do any real damage.

This is grim, Vim and Neovim: Opening this crafty file in your editor may pwn your box. Patch now if not already

TECO

If you want real fun try using TECO (especially when drunk!!!).

Like using the latest version of Microsoft Office? Love Offline Files? Not for long!

Use LibreOffice instead

Better price and no M$ crap "updates".

Barbie Girl was wrong? Life is plastic, it's not fantastic: We each ingest '121,000 pieces' of microplastics a year

Re: What fraction of a gram ?

Just like the body does with other particular pollutants such as soot, it will deal with microplastics by not absorbing them. For a substance to be absorbed from the digestive system it needs to be dissolved - as the microplastics do not dissolve they will be excreted. Microplastics that are inhaled (a tiny fraction of the total) will be trapped in mucus in the lungs and eventually be removed along with soot and similar pollutants into the digestive system.

What should be shown in the studies (but will not because it would detract from their message) is what fraction of the particles is actually absorbed into the body. My own guess is that far less than 1% of ingested particles actually get into the body.

What fraction of a gram ?

The study seems to be deliberately using alarming figures (the number of particles) rather than the combined weight of the particles which is probably far less than one gram.

Anyone who commutes into central London by tube or bus probably inhales more soot particles per day than their yearly intake of microplastic bits.

The discharge of plastic into the oceans has attracted a lot of press recently with figures such as over 8 million tons per year to make it seem a huge problem - however the oceans have about 1.4 million million million tons of water so the plastic pollution level works out to less than 10 micrograms per ton of seawater per year. (Studies also show that 90% of the plastic that enters the oceans does so in rivers in Asia and Africa (see https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/06/90-of-plastic-polluting-our-oceans-comes-from-just-10-rivers/ for more details) so efforts such as banning single use plastics in Europe will have very little effect on marine pollution.)

Apple kills iTunes, preps pricey Mac Pro, gives iPad its own OS – plus: That $999 monitor stand

Re: 1.4kW???

The problem is that it is not sufficiently beefy - loading this system up for video production work (multiple video cards) may stress the power supply.

On the Tech Report website (https://techreport.com/news/34618/the-new-mac-pro-packs-in-28-xeon-cores-1-5tb-of-ram-and-quad-vega-gpus) it shows that 2 Radeon Pro Vega II Duo cards can be used along with a Afterburner FPGA accelerator card.

Running the maximum configuration will have the PSU uncomfortably close to its maximum power capability. A 2kW PSU would have been better so that the PSU was not so stressed.

Icon for the PSU temperature ====>

DigitalOcean drowned my startup! 'We lost everything, our servers, and one year of database backups' says biz boss

Cloud - other peoples servers - their rules

Yet another example of why cloud computing should not normally be used for business critical applications.

The good use cases for the cloud

1) Short term processing peak

2) Web server

3) Running test (and/or development) servers well away from production systems

4) Running production while waiting for new servers to be installed

Running routine production long term in the cloud is NOT a good idea. Given the cost of cloud computing any sustained load will normally be far cheaper to run on own equipment over a 3 year or longer period.

The effects of GDPR and the US Cloud Act should also be considered for any company in the EU considering having any personal data in the cloud.

We ain't afraid of no 'ghost user': Infosec world tells GCHQ to GTFO over privacy-busting proposals

They have brains - evil ones

They are not stupid enough to believe what they are saying. However they think (correctly) that most politicians are stupid enough (and/or corrupt enough) to accept what GCHQ is saying and they also think that the majority of the public is stupid enough to not protest too much over these plans.

Of course any reasonably competent criminal or terrorist is going to use offline encryption and/or codes (like the WW2 "Jean has a long mustache" or "Alas Babylon" from the book of that name) which no official backdoor would help to crack.

The real purpose of these proposals is the old one - to give the people at GCHQ more power and they do not care about collateral damage to ordinary people.

Google relents slightly in ad-blocker crackdown – for paid-up enterprise Chrome users, everyone else not so much

Mozilla take note

As the Chrome engine is being altered to stop ad blocking - it is high time for Mozilla to abandon the plan to have Firefox being just a reskinned Chrome.

Ad blocking and script blocking are requirements for safe and sane internet use - any browser without those capabilities is unfit for use.

That's just Huawei it goes, shrugs founder as analysts forecast sales slump for embattled biz

Re: Survive and prosper

China is already trying to become self sufficient and not depend on the West. China is accepting Treasury bonds that it knows are unlikely to be repaid as a way of propping up the USA until that self sufficiency has been reached.

The reason in my opinion that China is trying to become self sufficient is that it expects that the USA will collapse sometime in the future when the burden of paying for Social Security (pensions for people in the UK) becomes unsupportable. The US congress has spent all the money it raised in Social Security taxes and the Social Security fund now consists of a lot of IOUs. Given the fact that there are more guns than people in the US, when the pensioners can no longer get paid, the US government will have the worst type of enemy - one with nothing left to lose. The resulting conflict is likely to make the US Civil War seem tame. The resulting economic collapse will also sink most of the other countries in the world.

(Look at the US Debt Clock - https://www.usdebtclock.org/ - to see why the US is in an untenable financial position - especially the US National Debt and the US Unfunded Liabilities numbers.)

No Huawei out: Prez Trump's game of chicken with China has serious consequences

Re: Internet and phones aren't the issue. Its the chips

I do not think that either Japan or Taiwan are sufficiently stupid to block semiconductor trade with China at the behest of the orange buffoon. Both are physically close to China and have a lot of trade with it.

The reasons for this attack on Huawei

1) They produce better products cheaper than american companies

2) They will not preinstall NSA backdoors in their product

3) These attacks on China are designed to produce patriotic fever in the pea-brained US electorate to improve the chances of the Republican party

if developer_docs == bad then app_quality = bad; Coders slam Apple for subpar API manuals

Cost and shortsightedness are the reasons

Writing good technical documentation requires good (read expensive) people. Doing the documentation for IOS to the standard that IBM did for OS/360 would cost several million dollars. As this cost does not have an immediate payback, the big bosses at Apple do not think it worthwhile. They do not realize that without good technical documentation, their products are certain to deteriorate in quality until eventually they lose the flagship appeal that currently allows them to grossly overcharge its customers.

Apple bosses need to realize that technical documentation needs to be done well and by professionals - not by the cheapest outfit that they can find in India.

Icon for what will happen to product quality without good documentation ===>

Giga-hurts radio: Terrorists build Wi-Fi bombs to dodge cops' cellphone jammers

Diretional antenna

A normal basic router has an isotropic aerial that transmits over an almost full sphere - a using a satellite dish instead could reduce this to under 2 degrees giving a massive signal boost.

(For more information on long range WiFi see the Wiki article - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-range_Wi-Fi - there are WiFi links mentioned there that are over 300km !!!!)

Standards group W3C wins support from all major players to get AI working in the browser

Yet more security holes

Given the huge number of security holes in browsers, the last thing that is wanted is yet more code and APIs to add to the security headaches.

(Come back Lynx - all is forgiven!!!)

Want a good Android smartphone without the $1,000+ price tag? Then buy Google's Pixel 3a

Overpriced compared to the Pocophone F1

The Pocophone F1 with 128GB and a Snapdragon 845 costs about £300 vs the Pixel 3a with 64GB and a Snapdragon 670 for £399

F1 advantages

The F1 has a 4000mAh battery - the 3a has a 3000mAh or 3700mAh battery

The F1 can take a microSD card if dual SIM operation is not needed (up to 256GB)

The F1 has 6GB RAM and 128GB storage vs 4GB RAM and 64GB storage

(A cheaper version of the F1 is available with 64GB storage instead of 128GB at around £250)

The F1 can act as a FM radio

3a advantages

Google name

OLED screen vs IPS screen on F1

NFC for pay by phone

In my opinion the advantages of the 3a do not make up for the advantages of the F1 and do not come close to justifying a price that is £100 higher than the price of the F1