Posts by mark l 2

To stop web giants abusing privacy, they must be prevented from respawning. Ever

When it comes to Facebook they have got no competition at all really. We have smaller social networking and chat platforms like Snapchat and Tiktok but these are minnows compared to the size of the combined Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp platforms.

Even Zuckerburg's promise to keep them separate from Facebook has now faded away as Whatsapp is to be rolled into Facebook messenger and Instagram already getting more and more of Facebook and they let you link your Instagram and Facebook accounts to let you login using just one account.

Samsung aims boot at Apple's decision not to bundle a charger in with the iPhone 12, foot ends up in mouth

I think its a step in the right direction for the charger to be an optional extra, as lots of people already have one so not including it cuts down on e-waste. But with several manufacturers having competing fast charging standards you might find that your old phone charger might work with your new phone. But only charge it at the standard slow charge rate, and to achieve the faster charging rate you need to go out and buy a new charger anyway.

I think it about time the phone manufacturers got together and come up with a standard for fast charging they all adopt, and then that can truly avoid creating unnecessary e-waste.

Your web browser running remotely in Cloudflare's cloud. That's it. That's the story

I can see where is could be more useful for those annoying website just don't work if JavaScript is disabled in Noscript. If the JavaScript is running on Cloudflares remote browser and all you are seeing is the rendered output then this allows you to use the website, but still keep your local browser with Noscript enabled. Sinces the JScript is running on the remote machine not your local device.

Intel celebrates security of Ice Lake Xeon processors, so far impervious to any threat due to their unavailability

How much of a risk is it that someone will freeze the DIMM and take it out of your server to extract its unencrypted contents?

Surely if someone has got physical access to your server it more than likely to be a rogue sysadmin who has root access anyway that you need to worry about than some theoretical liquid nitrogen wielding bad guy

Oracle starts to lose patience with Solaris holdouts

I am not familiar with SPARC hardware, what changed in 2010 which means that Oracle can't support Solaris 11.4 on this older hardware. I couldn't see anything on the Wikipedia article that mentioned any big hardware changes in 2010? Or is it forced obsolescence to make people upgrade

Even 2020 cannot bring forth the Year of Linux on the Desktop

Microsoft are unlikely to want to invest the millions it would cost them to recode Windows to use the Linux kernel instead of an NT one, for what would be very little gain for them. With 25+ years of development of the NT kernel and including undocumented APIs they have used in the past to make their own software run faster than the competition. They probably don't have the people who even know how it all work any more to port it over to Linux.

I reckon we would see Microsoft releasing a native Office for Linux before we see Windows running on top of a Linux kernel

LibreOffice rains on OpenOffice's 20th anniversary parade, tells rival project to 'do the right thing' and die

Lots of small business and home users get strong armed into believing they need to pay for a MS Office subscription, But if you are someone who rarely needs to to send or open documents from MS Office both OpenOffice and LibreOffice are more than enough of an office suite. I have used both OO and LO in within my business for over 10 years and only had a couple of issue with them.

I think having more than one FOSS office suite option is a good thing, although it does seem to be unfair that OO can't take improvements made by LO due to the license differences.

Microsoft will adopt Google Chrome's controversial Manifest V3 in Edge

Re: PI Hole

I used DNS blocking as well, but it doesn't work with sites such as Youtube, as I assume Google serve ads from the same domains as they serve videos?

But Ublock origin is still able to block the ads, but probably won't be able to once manifest v3 is out

UK govt advert encouraging re-skilling for cyber jobs implodes spectacularly

"This is not something from @DCMS & I agree it was crass"

Whether it was created by a third party or not. It was clearly done with permission from them. Don't you love how when the shit hits the fan they disown it and pass the buck to a someone else. Yet it this had been widely praised they would be happy to take the positive press for themselves.

Plus did the ad agency get permission to use the photo from the American models Instagram page? Just because someone posts a picture on a publicly viewable website DOES NOT mean its public domain and you can use it in your crappy ad campaigns without express written permission. (and it it were my photo a big fat cheque for the privilege)

Need next-gen connectivity but don't want to break the bank? Samsung's Galaxy A42 5G is a bin-raking £349

If I were to buy a new phone and I could get one that supports 5G for the same price as the 4G version, its probably worth getting the 5G version. But I certainly wouldn't pay extra for a 5G capable phone at the moment, as by the time the UK gets its 5G network rolled out now they have to remove all Huawei kit. The phone will probably be at the end of its life and wanting replacing.

Arm has 11 months to hire 490 UK techies. Good thing there isn't a pandemic on. Or, say, Brexit

I can't honestly see the Nvidia deal going through, unless Trump is ousted in the upcoming election. There is no way China is going to agree to ARM being sold to an American company that Trump can then put restrictions on who they can sell to in the name of national security.

Facebook's anti-trademark bot torpedoes .org website that just so happened to criticize Zuck's sucky ethics board

If all the work is done by bots, I am waiting for the day when the bots send a takedown notice to a legitimate Facebook domain name because no-one reviewed the takedowns before they were fired off to the registrars.

China takes TikTok-WeChat ding-dong to World Trade Organization, accuses US, India of breaking global rules

Re: doesn't China already ban a lot of US apps?

I think Whatapp and other apps can operate in China if they set up an office in China and obey by the government rules. IE blocking access to anything the Chinese authorities tell them to.

Facebook, Google and others decided it wasn't in their own interest to do that and so their apps aren't allowed through the great firewall.

Excel Hell: It's not just blame for pandemic pandemonium being spread between the sheets

While there are times when an Excel spreadsheet is perfectly adequate for the job, it sounds like using it for contact tracing, with what has to be tens of thousands of records, if 16000 can get lost without anyone immediately noticing is clearly not one of those times when it was the right tool.

Apple seeks damages from recycling firm that didn't damage its devices: 100,000 iThings 'resold' rather than broken up as expected

It wouldn't put it passed Apple to brick their devices once they are traded in to stop them being resold, just like Sonos was doing to get people to buy the latest shiny shiny. Offer a 10% discount of a new phone or ipad when you take your old one into the Apple shop and have it bricked.

Unis turn to webcam-watching AI to invigilate students taking exams. Of course, it struggles with people of color

How does such poorly written software ever get released? Do software companies not test their software anymore, or do they just take the Microsoft approach to testing, release it and then recall or patch it when problems start?

Microsoft lends Windows on Arm a hand with emulation layer to finally run 64-bit x86 apps at last

"Microsoft had already ported its Chromium-based Edge browser to 64-bit Arm as a native application, though not Office, which runs as a 32-bit x86 suite on emulation"

I wonder why MS hasn't bothered to port Office to ARM yet and is relying on x86 emulation? They had an ARM native Office 2013 version available for Windows RT.

Maybe MS can't be bothered to put the development effort into porting their own flagship Office suite to ARM as they fear it is not going to gain enough market share and will end up as another dead platform, just like Windows RT.

Chap beats rap in WhatsApp zap flap: Russian banker walks from insider trading case after deleting software

Of course the government will use this as another reason to get encrypted messaging apps banned, along with terrorists and pedos, we can now add Russian bankers to the list of bad people who use the apps to avoid justice.

Where are we now? Microsoft 363? 362? We've lost count because Exchange Online isn't playing nicely this morning

"Aha, so the DEV team is testing in production.."

Well that is how Microsoft test updates Windows 10 by pushing them out and waiting to see if people report breakages, so why not do the same with Office 365?

Who watches the watchers? Samsung does so it can fling ads at owners of its smart TVs

The only issue with buying a monitor as opposed to a smart TV is the big price difference. You can pick up a Philips 4K 50 inch TV for a about £350 where as a 42 inch Philips 4K monitor is about £529, and doesn't pick up broadcast TV.

So unless you need the extra refresh rates and resolutions from the monitor its better to just buy a smart tv and not connect it up to the internet. You can just plug in a separate box such as an Amazon fire stick or Roku and get the streaming services through there. And the apps will probably get updated more frequently than the ones on the smart TV. How many 5 year old smart TVs now can't access the services any more because the apps are out of date?

Hydrogen-powered train tested on Britain's railway tracks as diesel alternative

Looking at the video on the BBC website the hydrogen and fuel cells do take up a whole carriage, but if this were to covert a diesel-electric loco such as a class 88 to run of hydrogen I guess this could all fit inside the locomotive and could then be used for freight as well as passenger routes

Hopefully science can work out to produce hydrogen cleaner and store it more densely to make hydrogen more viable as a replacement fuel.

The perils of building a career on YouTube: Guitar teacher's channel nearly deleted after music publisher complains

There is a video on Youtube about copyright and content ID and how the creator of the video had a copyright strike against his own works by a Asian TV company that had used a clip of his video in one of their own, and then used contentID to claim his video. He ended up having to go to court to sort it out as the Asian company refused to remove the copyright claim. Its an interesting watch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Jwo5qc78QU

I have had false contentID matches on my videos, and until the video has received over 1000 views you can't even dispute the claim, therefore allowing the false claimant to take your revenue for the first 1000 views. And as the person in this article mentions its almost impossible to actually speak to a real person either on the phone or over a live chat at Youtube to discuss such matters.

Yet another twist for 2020: Google says Android 12 will make it easier to install alternative app stores

It just Googles lip service to try and avoid litigation or anti trust fines etc. They could easily offer this option today by allowing other app stores to be installed from Google Play and this could then support versions of Android older than a version that isn't even out yet.

They know that it will take years before Android 12 will be widely available even after its eventually released. There are still a lot of devices that haven't even being updated to Android 10 yet despite Android 11 now being released.

TikTok wins reprieve as judge rules it can stay in American iOS, Android app stores for now

Re: ....all while managing the most severe public health crisis in a century.

Managing to try and blame it on everyone else to take the heat of his own incompetency.

Remember when he suggested people might be able to use strong light and disinfectant 'internally' to kill the virus? Of course sarcastically as all good presidents do at press conferences in the middle of a pandemic

Epic, Spotify, ProtonMail and pals rise up as one against Apple's 30% cut, call for end to Cupertino-style markets

30% cut of the profit, it does seem an 'industry standard' fee, but that is mainly because Apple were one of the first to set up a paid app store and decided to charge 30% and then the others that came later followed the Apple pricing model.

Since there is no other option to distribute your apps on iOS other than through the app store, it does smell like a monopoly to me, even if Android devices outnumber iOS. Android does at least for now have the option of installing apps manually and has other app stores such as the Samsung and Huawei ones.

All those ‘teleworking is the new normal’ predictions? Not so much, say bosses

I am not sure if the results from an Australian survey would be replicated in other countries. Australia as a whole have had relatively low rates of the virus, just a few hotspots such as Melbourne.

They haven't had the everybody back to work a few weeks ago, to be followed up with a please go back to working from home where possible because of a second wave that we are currently experiencing in the UK.

Its much less risky to plan for continued WFH for the foreseeable future than risk getting staff into offices and then a second wave meaning you have to quickly enable WFH for them

Brexit travel permits designed to avoid 7,000-lorry jams come January depend on software that won't be finished till April

Re: Dont worry, the pain

Well the Swiss have a free trade agreement with the EU. We as we are looking like, unless something happens in the next week we will be moving to WTO rules in January and all the red tape that goes with that arrangement. But you know taking back control and all that

NHS COVID-19 launch: Risk-scoring algorithm criticised, the downloads, plus public told to 'upgrade their phones'

Are the England and Wales app going to be sharing the data with the apps from Scotland and NI? As I am sure there are many people who live in one country but travel to another for work or visiting family etc and could be infected?

Also I always thought that Google and Apple has said they only support one app per country using their API?

In a world where up is down, it's heartwarming to know Internet Explorer still tops list of web dev pain points

"The problem with Internet Explorer, as far as web developers are concerned, is that companies often require web apps to be compatible with IE, which limits the kinds of capabilities that can be deployed.."

Which fsck wits are asking for IE compatibility in 2020! Sure you might have to use IE for some legacy web apps but please don't use it for anything else other than those legacy apps.

Braking point: Tesla has had quite enough of Trump's 'unlawful' tariffs on Chinese-made parts, sues Uncle Sam

I suspect even if Tesla could find a US supplier for the parts they need, it would still be cheaper to buy from the China and pay the tariff. The lower labour costs of producing them in China means a US manufacturer would be hard press to supply them at the same price and still make a profit.

TikTok seeks injunction to halt Trump ban, claims it would break America's own First and Fifth Amendments

Well hopefully for TikTok if they can get an injunction to stop the ban then perhaps they can drag it out in court for a few months to see what the outcome of the election is. Although from stories I read on other site, it appears Trump isn't going admit defeat even if he does loose the election.

Although I haven't heard what Joe Biden and the Democrats will do in regards to Wechat and Tiktok should they win the election?

Azure DevOps Services reminds users that, yes, it really is time to pull the plug on Internet Explorer 11

I fail to see why IE is still pre-installed on Windows 10, its just another potential security vulnerability on every single Windows 10 PC. It should now be an optional extra for those enterprises that still have legacy platforms that only work in IE and they can download it and install it as needed. And FFS set it up to allow it access to those whitelisted apps that need it, don't be going out onto the internet with it.

Microsoft will release a web browser for Linux next month. Repeat, Microsoft will release a browser for Linux – and it uses Google's technology

While I haven't tried the Chromium based Edge, I can see that it maybe useful for environment of mixed Windows, Macs and Linux machines to all have the same browsers but you don't want to go with Chrome, but you want maximum compatibly with badly written site that only usually work properly in the Google browser.

Personally though I would just go with pure Chromium before Google or Microsoft fiddled around with it, Brave or Vivaldi as they are also multi platform and use the same rendering engine.

Adidas now stands for All Day I'm Disconnecting All Servers as owners of 'smart' Libra scales furious over bricked kit

The same thing happened to the Jawbone fitness trackers, they still work if you have the original app on your phone from before the backend servers were closed down, but if you ever logout of the app, change phones or buy one new then you can't even create a new account anymore to use the app.

FYI there are still several of these being sold on ebay, flea markets etc for the unwary shoppers as 'fitness trackers' but in essence you a just buying a wrist band with some obsolete tech inside.

UK govt urged to bolt tough legal protections onto Arm and protect jobs – or simply veto Nvidia's £31bn acquisition

Of course the UK gov won't be interested in intervening as much now Arm is being bought by an American company, because of our 'special relationship' with the US and we are looking to get a post Brexit trade deal with them, they don't want to start rocking the boat.

This is the same reason the UK haven't kicked up too much fuss over the killing of British teenager Harry Dunn by an American Anne Sacoolas and the US refusing to extradite her. Yet imagine how much fuss the US would kick up if were a reversed situation, they would be threatening to boycott UK made products and services until something was done.

Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 debut derailed by website glitches, bots, lack of supply

Nvidia clearly were not bothered about bots and scalpers making purchases as they have made their money. It isn't that difficult to spot when an order form is completed in 2 seconds by a bot when it would take a real human at least 10x that to fill it in.

Oracle Zooms past rivals to run TikTok’s cloud, take stake alongside WalMart and ByteDance investors

There is still no real explanation on how its going to be handled if a user of Tiktok global communicated with Tiktok China. Who gets to handle the data? Or will Tiktok China become a stand-alone network without the ability to without the ability to be used outside China?

Good to see how good old Team American world police have now managed to free the world's teenagers from those commie bstards, so now all that juicy data can be hoovered up by Walmart and Oracle instead.

Wanna live on the edge and play with a multi-core system crammed with 5G, AI? Here's a dev kit Qualcomm has in mind

Re: Some tweaks for Tesla's image processing needed?

The point is, despite the misleading name of Autopilot, it isn't a self driving car so the driver should be the one that recognises that there is a police car behind and take control of the vehicle.

Bad news for 'cool dads' trying to bond with their teens: China-owned TikTok and WeChat face US download ban by Sunday

The thing about telling teenagers (who are the primary users of Tiktok at least) that something is now forbidden, is this will make even those not that interested before more likely go and download it before it gets banned. As how many US teenagers give a shit if there lip sync videos are being monitored by the Chinese/.

As for not allowing US based app store to host them or provide updated, If i were Bytedance or Tencent I would push out an update to the apps today to allow update from there own servers before they get booted off Google Play and Apple app store. They code do it via some hidden code just like Epic did to enable their in app payments after Apple had approved the app.

Amazon gets its tax excuses in early amid rising UK profits – but leaves El Reg off the press list. Can't think why

We have already seen how Amazon reacted when they were forced to pay an additional 2% digital services tax, they put the fees up for the third party sellers to offset it. As obviously if Amazon had absorbed the 2% tax like ebay did, they would have had made a few million less profit a year.

USA still hasn’t figured out details of WeChat ban but promises users won't be punished

No doubt once again, if Trump demands that Wechat partners with an American company he will expect that the US government should get a cut of the money for facilitating it.

I personally don't see how Wechat or Tiktok is any worse than Facebook or Google for harvesting privacy data that can be used to track people. Yet I can avoid having to use Wechat or Tiktok a lot more easily than I can Google and Facebook

Google bans stalkerware apps from Android store. Which is cool but... why were they allowed in the first place?

What surprised me about this article is that online gambling apps are only allowed on Google Play if they operate in Brazil, France, Ireland, and the UK. I know from watching American TV and film that the US doesn't allow gambling apart from in a few places such as Vegas. But I would have thought more of the ROW would have allowed it than just 4 countries, 3 of which are next to each other.

Ah yes, Sony, that major player in the smartphone space, has a new flagship inbound: The Xperia 5 II

I am surprised Sony hasn't leveraged the PlayStation brand more to sell handset to those who use their phone for gaming. They could ship phones with a case with some analogy sticks and buttons with an official Playstation emulators installed and support for streaming PlayStation now games, and would make a nice portable gaming device as well as a phone.

Apple takes another swing at Epic, says Unreal Engine could be a 'trojan horse' threatening security

From what others have said on here Epic were allowed to accept payments from outside the Fornite app using a browser etc?

If this is the case then why risk getting booted from the app store, just use nudge techniques to push the users to go to a browser to purchase by offering extras over paying through the app via Apple payments. After all offering extra guns, outfits or whatever doesn't actually cost Epic anything extra as it all just virtual items.

Oracle hosting TikTok US data. '25,000' moderators hired. Code reviews. Trump getting his cut... It's the season finale

So Oracle are going to handle US users data but the ROW will still be handled by Bytedance? So who gets to store the data when a US user communicates with a Chinese user on the platform?

Who cares what Apple's about to announce? It owes us a macOS x86 virtual appliance for non-Mac computers

I suspect Apple are quite happy with MacOS only running officially on Apple hardware. They tried the licensing of MacOS to other manufacturers in the 1990s and a lot of the computers released by the third parties under cut Apple on price. I doubt they will want to go down that road again especially since at the moment they can charge whatever prices they want having no competition for official MacOS running hardware.

I think they probably do envision iOS and MacOS becoming one in the future. So you can write an app once and it can be run on either iOS or MacOS but hopefully with different UI depending on if its on a phone or PC. As Microsoft showed us with Windows 8 that a one UI doesn't work for both phones and a computer.

Bad apples: US customs seize OnePlus earbuds thinking they're knock-off AirPods

This is the sort of thing that happens when government agencies are more interested in what they post on social media than actually doing their jobs correctly.

Vinyl sales top CDs for the first time in decades in America, streaming rules

I used to own over 100 vinyl records from the 1990s as I was big into dance music and DJing, and appreciate the hands on you can get with vinyl is good for mixing. But while I am all for owning physical copies of music I don't get why you would choose to buy the vinyl version over the CD if its just played on a regular turntable. To get the same audio quality that even a cheap CD player can output you need to spend quite a lot on a turntable and amp. Then there is other inconveniencing of warping, scratches, jumps, flipping over the record, the space they take up.

QR-code based contact-tracing app brings 'defining moment' for UK’s 'world beating' test and trace system

When I went out a few weeks ago there was one bar that had the doorman stopping people coming in until you scanned the QR code with your phone and actually showed them the screen to prove you had done it. While at another pub just a few minutes down the road I couldn't even see any details for their track and trace, just a few signs up telling people to stay 2 meters apart, and virtually no one was.

I hope the NHS app has a QR code scanner built into it, as unlike iOS not all Android phones can scan them without a 3rd party app. And there needs to be a backup paper system for those who don't have a smart phone or are out of data on their phone etc.

Microsoft releases kernel for unique (but critically panned) Surface Duo phone

I guess it goes to show that MS releasing a phone isn't news worthy, as I didn't know it was actually out until I saw this story as none of the mainstream news outlets mentioned it. Yet if this had been a new Apple phone it would have been a top story news.

The phone does seem way over priced, its MS thinking they are a premium brand again, when are they going to realise they don't have the 'cool factor' that Apple has.

FYI Before someone thinks I am an Apple fan boy, I don't own any Apple devices as although they are usually well made pieces of kit they are overpriced and just like buying a designer clothes you are paying for the label, and i am happy to go for a none premium brand.