Posts by Paul Shirley

BT will HATE us for this one weird 5G trick

Re: Empty pavements and buses

Sodding pedestrians survive because drivers are far too scared of what happens to insurance premiums if they don't survive...

Cyanogen mods self away from full Android alternative

Re: My other half hated it...

It's always been a PIA that AOSP roms have made so little effort to gracefully support upgrading. Hot installs of the updates to the same major version usually work. Anything else needs a full wipe and even app backups often fail. Stock Android is getting good enough to make that a serious disincentive to use them.

Re: They screwed over OnePlus now no other company would risk working with them

There were enough reports of flaky cyanogen releases on Oneplus that I'm not 100% convinced there was a success story there anyway. Further tainted by the hardware issues making it harder to tell what was actually broken.

Robots blamed for wiping 10 per cent off the value of sterling

Re: @Alan Brown

What could one use Sunderland for? Wind farms?

That would just undermine efforts to send the Welsh back down the mines on workfare ;)

Re: We have got our country back!

...who cares if there's just a little less of it in british hands every time the £ drops and foreigners go on a stock buying frenzy...

Early indications show UK favouring 'hard Brexit', says expert

Re: Three things you can do about this Brexit nonsense

It did occur to someone. The freedom hating witch then vetoed parliament having any say preemptively.

Then add in the effect on JIT supply lines of even small and/or unpredictable delays crossing customs borders. That inefficiency will drive assembly plants out of gb.

Re:Brexiters are tired of experts and facts

Luckily we're being governed by amateurs and failures from now on.

Elite amateurs though, so no real change.

Re: Huh?

"we won't know unless we ask them, put it to a vote."

No, that doesn't work. We'll only know when brexit happens and we all find out what the consequences are after enough years pass. Whatever happens half(ish) of the population is wrong and will never accept that without experiencing it. (It's not impossible everyone is wrong and in/out is irrelevant - just unlikely)

If I get another vote, I'll be voting the English & Welsh out regardless. I'll also be voting for breakup of GB if given the chance.

Trade tariffs are also influenced by perceived fairness in production and competition. Directly subsidise your producers more than your target country: tariff increased, indirectly subsidise them with poor working rights for employees: tariff increased. It's the underlying basis for the 4 freedoms, letting movement eliminate unfair competition.

The tories will find themselves seriously constrained on their usual behaviours if they really wants free trade.

EU turns screws on Android – report

Re: Google bar on home screen

It's not configurable on Android 6 on my LG G4 only because the old superimposed bar doesn't seem to exist at all. Both available Google search bars (and the LG equivalents) are just widgets, trivially removable.

ZX Spectrum Vega+ will ship on time, developer claims amid doubts

150% authentic Sinclair

No need to worry, they're just being 150% authentic, honouring the long history of Sinclair products never shipping on time or even being made before thousands of buyers have waited months!

Unlucky Luckey: Oculus developers invoke anti-douchebag clause, halt games for VR goggles

Re: Americans, again not realising there's a world outside them

the comedy act with the daft hair who still thinks he can give himself a presidential pardon just before that November court appearance, fire the judge if that fails or rewrite the law to get off the hook.

Forgetting the last Clinton couldn't manage that, despite being 10x more slippery and not having pissed off the entire legal system.

Brexit at the next junction: Verity's guide to key post-vote skills

Re: The past was not always so good

A surprising number of youngsters seem to have no problem with their 568ml glass actually containing about 500ml of liquid when the head dies ;)

Malware figures out it's running on VMs and refuses to execute

ummm

More detail please.

Does it have to be Word opening them?

What if you delete the history regularly?

Which history is it checking anyway?

Virgin Media costs balloon by MEEELLIONS in wake of Brexit

Re: Another Illustration of the Fact...

But the affects of the vote in favour of an EU exit are being felt now; the pound has already lost around 10% of it's value against foreign currencies for instance.

Thanks to currency hedging the effects of currency fluctuations aren't being felt by most companies yet and by almost none of the public, to remain competitive companies without protection can't afford to pass on the change till their competitors are equally affected. That won't last forever, effects might even start before A50 is signed.

Most people probably aren't worrying much about the stock market reaction either, after all it panics all the time but more because they forget where their pensions are invested.

Windows 10 backlash: Which? demands compo for forced upgrades

Re: Two faced Which?

Helping people use a pre-installed clusterfuck OS they will be unable to avoid on new PCs is not endorsement, it's accepting the sad reality that most plebs won't (and probably shouldn't) try to replace what it shipped with. It's an OS even experienced IT folk need internet searches to make sense of and we can't all choose to dump the sorry POS.

Let's Encrypt won its Comodo trademark battle – but now fan tools must rename

Re: @Paul Shirley Wow

IANAL but it might give Comodo a chance to demand a licence on equivalent terms

Trademark law is explicitly discriminatory in favour of the IP holder with no way to force issue of a licence against their will unless they signed up for something like FRAND in standards licencing or other similar binding commitment. It's purpose is to prevent competitors doing what Comodo tried. Comodo would not have a cause of action to get a trial afaik. In fact they only got this far because LetsEncrypt had not been trademarked, they would have hit a stone wall right away.

Legal costs are a problem but I'd argue a suitably restrictive standard licence would be both unusable by competitors and a visible sign they were protecting the trademark for the courts.

Re: Wow

I wonder if they even considered licencing the trademark under non transferable terms before taking the nuclear option? Defending does not automatically mean shutting down.

Google GPS grab felt like a feature, was actually a bug

When even slightly contradicting the editor's obsessive ranting and raving it's probably wise to choose words carefully ;)

Play is the store app.

Play Services is a support framework, one job it does is mediating access to location to prevent multiple clients hammering the underlying GPS & Wi-Fi hardware. It's meant to reduce battery use. You really want a warning about disabling it.

On Android they're both apps, someone thought they should both be in the app location permission list but took the trouble to add that warning and the confusing ok option. On my phone the location settings button takes me to location settings and happily let me disable them. Be more sensible to not list it with apps perhaps.

Songsmiths sue US antitrust over Google-friendly rules ruling

Re: There few getting "rich".

Except... The music industry is looking robustly healthy. The artists are a mixed story. Those still participating in it are more screwed than ever, those outside it are doing better than the nothing they had before.

Andrew would do better agitating to reform the whole system instead of picking villains challenging the status quo. Too agitated to see the evil in front of his nose.

Ad flog Plus: Adblock Plus now an advertising network, takes cash to broker web banners

Re: Isn't this actually what we've all been asking for?

Setting up their own ad broker/server and pre-approved, locally stored content potentially makes injecting malware from compromised sites impossible. They'd need to hack the adblock server or use MITM interception downstream of it.

Acceptable ads promises are warm and fuzzy but the tangled mess of intermediates serving ads prevent it being safe or trustworthy without a system like this. An entire industry needs tearing down and rebuilding with safety as a goal. They won't do it voluntarily, if nothing else this might force their hand.

Post-Brexit UK.gov must keep EU scientists coming, say boffins

Re: "attracting European students and staff members to the UK was necessary"

"You'll presumably agree that we really shouldn't have given the hoi polloi the vote, when the urban liberals know what's best."

My position is we should allow an informed public to vote. Actual effort has to be made to honestly inform them. That attempts to misinform voters to influence a vote should have career ending penalties or worse. That deliberate media misinformation should have business threatening penalties (and for Europe that needed to start when BJ got his first EU reporting job decades ago).

And in an ideal world we'd also come up with a less damaging way to register protest votes and avoid issue hijacking.

But most of all I'd like sore winners to FOAD.

Re: why not promote science/engineer in UK Education instead?

You're talking about a different problem, getting skilled workers. What's under immediate threat is progress enabled by collaboration and cross fertilisation between researchers. Usually fairly short term arrangements, not life long commitment.

UK loses 2 ways here, it's researchers miss that contact and the new thinking it brings and UK institutions miss capturing any of the benefits. Throwing money at creating more local researchers won't magically make them more creative or intelligent and they'd still be stuck in their own isolated talent pool. A second rate solution with second rate results.

There's the real possibility that any brain drain is UK -> EU.

Brexit directly threatens EU -> UK immigration, from movement restrictions & the hostile sentiment here. Most countries have always been very happy greasing the wheels of immigration for higher level scientists, all the way to offering citizenship if needed. A future where UK->EU movement is still easy for the skilled is very possible and a net outflow very believable.

By the time our political scum work out how to talk down the leave vote enough to compete for talent, it will be too late.

Re: "attracting European students and staff members to the UK was necessary"

Oh, I think so many leave voters demanding less EU immigrants on their precious island is closer to demanding EU out than UK out.

Brexit makes life harder for an Internet of Things startup

Re: I wouldn't worry

"The single market and its associated custom union are highly beneficial for its members."

They are not.

Interesting. When a brexiteer has a wet dream about trade deals it's guaranteed to be great. When the EU has an actual concrete 'trade deal' it's automatically a failure?

Day 1 of brexit negotiations may end very quickly when you have no actual choice when offered 4 or 0 of the 4 freedoms as the base deal.

Edward Snowden's 40 days in a Russian airport – by the woman who helped him escape

Re: A fair trial?

The yanks never quite understand that patriotism is not rubber stamping whatever your country is already doing, it's making sure what you're country is doing is right and worth your support.

Sadly most of the UK has gone the same way.

Re: Elections

I don't think PR helps either, since the pool of parties (and hence manifestos) is still pretty small.

PR helps by reducing the chance of an absolute majority provided at least 3 parties gain seats. That makes it much harder to force through the most despicable parts of each manifesto and injects some fine grain into policy&law making. If nothing else it slows down gov and it's endless, wasteful see saw lurches left & right.

PR should improve the pool of parties as well since your vote is much more likely to be represented in parliament, even if there's no chance of government. Should...

But of course this country voted against PR so apparently the 'majority' quite like pissing money away on left-right excursions into madness.

NHS health apps project plan: Powered by your medical records

Re: There is no security issue

Luckily someone else has tried the competing businesses approach, we've seen it, voters don't like it.

Nul points: PM May's post-Brexit EU immigration options

Re: Strange logic

What you missed is the ordinary leave voters don't see any obvious direct benefit to themselves. Indirect benefits are a hard sell, especially if elites are successfully intercepting a lot of it, out of sight out of mind. If migrants stop injecting money into local economies the locals probably won't believe it's a problem, even as the effects kick in.

Brexit? We have heard of this, says Dixons Carphone CEO

Re: Hang on. ...

The financial markets are irrational, responding to unexpected changes in largely unpredictable ways, while nothing changes about brexit they're straight back to checking whether birds have started the winter migration when predicted and counting cracks in the pavement before tossing a coin about how they feel about it! Makes it very easy to pretend nothings wrong.

While May is still stonewalling it would be wasted effort for business to do more than contingency planning and inadvisable to go public about the details. The longer May waits though, the faster they'll be able to move later, so it's only borrowing against the future disruption.

Meanwhile the voting public haven't been affected by the fall in the pound, price rises haven't worked through yet on imports. Brexiteers are loudly shouting about exports and if you don't look hard things look great. The ones that know what's coming know they should spend now not later.

I'm left wondering what would have happened if Boris&Gove had succeeded in their cynical plan to delay signing A50 for years. Hard to believe this lull before the storm could have lasted that long.

A nice long pub crawl is good for your health, if you stay on your feet

Re: Inducing paranoia pulls in the grant money!

Moderation? You health nazi!

Spinning that Brexit wheel: Regulation lotto for tech startups

Re: What's next?

If beer is a key factor, you already know you're going to Belgium!

Japan's Brexit warning casts shadow over Softbank ARM promises

Re: Diplomatic goodbye

Leaving the EU can take as long as 6 to 20 years

Leaving the EU with a good deal could take that long. There are other options where the UK still spends 6-20 years disentangling itself but actually leaves nearly empty handed in no more than 2 years. Given the various UK biased 'deals' assorted soft brexiteers (and May) are talking up and the hard-brexit idiots, I'm guessing 2 years is more probable.

Re: Nope.

There won't be a second referendum. End. Of. I believe Theresa May has been crystal on that.

In post-truth politics what does that mean? Does it even mean anything?

Brexit must not break the cloud, Japan tells UK and EU

There's no guarantee the EU will want anything we can offer

There's no guarantee what they do want won't move production into the EU...

Re: Dear Japan

something that is good for business is not necessarily good for the wider electorate

My impression of the brexiteer ringleaders is they're strongly driven by the desire to stop EU interference in their UK business ambitions. Everything else is just whatever rouses the mob, a mob that just voted to let tories weaken worker protection!

A good question to ask is why tories in general are letting May make promises to workers they've never shown any support for ever. Maybe they're still in shock...

We also don't want to pay any tax and Europe gives us that opportunity

Last week's memo about attacking dodgy EU tax deals hasn't reached you. It might seem a good opportunity for the UK to undercut Europe but I seriously doubt any deal is available with the EU that allows the UK to do it.

Remember: brexit is not just an opportunity for the UK, it's also an opportunity for the EU to change it's relationship with and what it will allow the UK to get away with.

Re: What is that ?

Luckily brexit is happening under a remain PM who seems intent on letting the brexiteers self destruct in their own fantasy worlds of what brexit means.

Worry more that a childless PM has rather less invested in future success for the UK than 'breeds like a rabbit' Boris, insulated by a PMs pension she may not care so much about allowing bad brexit decisions ;)

Life imitates satire: Facebook touts zlib killer just like Silicon Valley's Pied Piper

FSE already under patent attack

Hold off on the compression until the patent situation is resolved, a bunch of (bogus) patents related to FSE are already causing trouble...

Making us pay tax will DESTROY EUROPE, roars Apple's Tim Cook

Pocket change yes. The domino that starts the topple?

The problem is simply that tax authorities worldwide have been trained to negotiate with the rich, by the rich running governments. Now we have truly independent 'well off' eurocrats doing what's right for the ordinary people instead.

It's like you could be well paid to do "the right thing". Am idea that will never catch on in this country.

Missing Milky Way mass blown away by bingeing supermassive black hole

Re: "a million-degree gaseous fog permeating our galaxy"

Dark matter is and stays undetectable and to all evidence does not interact via photons.

Dark matter is still just theory (ok dozens of theories) to explain why we haven't found matter we can see. If a relatively cool, dilute plasma only noticeably interacts with photons we haven't looked for, then Dark matter isn't dark, we're just blind.

Gas as the missing matter may have been prematurely discarded. Be nice if truly exotic stuff exists, more useful to notice we missed something this big though!

Corbyn lied, Virgin Trains lied, Harambe died

I remember BR staff trying very hard to get you to the destination whatever it took when things went wrong. I also vividly remember the first post privatisation problem trip where none of them could promise to get me further than the next companies section of my trip. We now have at least 1 less train to choose because it's not safe to rely on the last one, too much chance of being stranded without help.

Re: damn, they're spilling travel secrets

Better clarify, by timid I mean people that won't bother checking if a seat reservation is currently active or won't assume an empty reserved seat is empty because it's owner isn't on the train. It was not a suggestion to frighten people from grabbing their reservations!

If there's no one in a reserved seat 5min after its left the starting station, it's very unlikely the owner's coming for it. Yet those seats go empty a lot of the time.

damn, they're spilling travel secrets

My wife and I rely on the high number of unclaimed reserved seats, seats reservations that end before or start after your journey and the timidity of many travellers to claim them. Now everyone's been tipped off! I see travel annoyance in my future.

Paper mountain, hidden Brexit: How'd you say immigration control would work?

Re: contactless payments as ID Cards

In the UK paying off the police is frowned on. What other reason would they have to check your card?

Re: Simple is best

Any attempt to rebuild that border could work wonders for the English constructioni industry on the mainland... the rest of the EU might be less aggressive in response to any brit attempt to isolate and use Ireland as a bargaining chip. dont make that mistake.