Posts by skwdenyer 103 publicly visible posts • joined 12 Nov 2009
The key thing with Slack and suchlike should be about expectations.
Email to me is mail, not a near-real-time medium. You send me an email; I read & respond when next I do email.
Slack and such like should exist for near-real-time comms. If you’re logged in, you’re available; if not, you’re not.
People expecting near-real-time email comms are the biggest productivity killers I know.
Always worth remembering the Star Trek Holodeck only worked because of some off-menu TARDIS capabilities that appeared to be used in no other context ever. If the crew’s “Holo Adventures” had been limited to the size of the ‘deck itself it would have made rather less compelling viewing…
Remember, IBM previewed this in an ad way back in 1999 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Z3INHcM_Tg
Also recall Charmed Technology, the wearable tech spin-off from MIT back in a similar time-frame.
Like most overnight successes, when this really hits it will have been 30 years in the making...!
Google Glass was just too early. As the old saying goes: "never be a pioneer: it's the earliest Christian who encounters the hungriest lion..." Apple has made a huge success out of being late, but polished, to markets. AVP is an example of them going against convention, and suffering for it.
Google Glass was a fantastic concept, hamstrung by then-available technology. I still want one, but with a higher-resolution display, better battery life, etc.
A re-imagined Google Glass, with a Silicon Carbon battery, modern processing and display optics, could be a very useful tool for a great many people - starting with every bicycle courier in the gig economy, every motorcyclist, every hiker, etc. It needs properly positioning, to be equipped with the right app support, and available at the right price point.
Tech is often a slow burn. Remember this IBM Ad from 1999 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Z3INHcM_Tg - I wanted one there and then, but I've always been ahead of the curve ;)
No, I think you were right first time around. This appears to be a load of nonsense.
https://blog.arduino.cc/2025/11/21/the-arduino-terms-of-service-and-privacy-policy-update-setting-the-record-straight/ clarifies things - the Terms are referring to the Arduino cloud offering. No, you can't attempt to reverse engineer their SaaS offering. Yes, you have to grant them a licence for anything you upload (otherwise they couldn't share it on your behalf). No this doesn't change the fundamentals of the Arduino proposition.
I don't think you understand the concept of agency. The adblocker doesn't make "such a change and distributes the result to the user." The adblocker (the software) is doing no distribution; the adblocker software's developer very definitely is not doing so.
The user install a piece of software (a browser) and another piece of software (a browser extension) to customise the browser's rendering to his/her tastes. There is no third party "distribution" of modified copyright works. All choices are made by the user; some are merely automated by the use of a helper extension. Should the user wish, he/she could instead craft a custom style sheet to exclude the vast majority of ads from a given site, for instance - automating that process doesn't change the user's agency in the matter.
I can see why the court came to that decision *IF* (as is often the case) the defendant's lawyers were insufficiently bright to explain the issues in the correct way.
Sorry, but "subsidiary of" just means Microsoft USA owns all the shares in the GmbH. It doesn't make the GmbH immune to, say, German law. If German law says "no data may be shared with your shareholders" then that's the German law.
What's needed is for a nation state to take exactly that line, i.e. start prosecuting subsidiaries of US companies for sharing data with their shareholders.
The real question not being posed is whether this development represents the start of a move to implement a version of the Fenwick proposals to replace Trident with an air-based deterrent. See https://basicint.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Assessing-an-F-35-based-nuclear-deterrent.-Kevan-Jones-MP..pdf for instance.
This is a far more complex problem than it first seems.
If I spend 3 years reading others’ history books, and then use that research to write a new history book, have I created a derivative work? Or have I simply used what I’ve read to educate myself? To learn? Should my school text books contain a waiver to enable my essays to be free from these suggested IP infractions? Where is the line?
If the LLMs are learning from published works, they’re doing no more than you or I would given a large enough library and sufficient reading time.
There may be a different argument to be applied to visual models, but, again, if I study enough pop art and then create my own, should I be paying royalties to Warhol’s estate?
The proposal here seems to be to create new IP law to treat an LLM differently from a human.
The issue really isn’t, to me, about copyright; it is a wider discussion about social good. And, in particular, whether there should be in effect an “AI tax” to in some way level the playing fields. The primary difference is one of scale - however much I learn, I can only do a day’s work every day; an AI is scalable. The value it can extract from its research and study is far greater than mine.
As a society, do we want LLMs or not? And how narrowly are we prepared to write laws that catch OpenAI, but don’t tax individuals just for using a library to better themselves?
“Corporate raiders” who might more accurately be termed “owners” if they buy enough shares.
If you don’t want to answer to anyone with money and intent, don’t sell your shares on the open market. Far too many corporate boards seem to think they are (or should be) above the rule of the company’s owners…
Intel has relatively little value to society. Another chipmaker will be along in a minute if Intel were to fall. It may have strategic value to the US economy - in which case the US government can take a majority stake, or legislate to prevent its owners from exercising their power.
What precisely is wrong with Apple’s approach? I purchase Apple phones precisely because there is some gate-keeping going on, some measure of control and accountability. I don’t want or need my phone (a core communications device) to be a software free-for-all. I don’t want my phone to be abandoned or forced to upgrade hardware just to upgrade my OS. If I wanted that I’d be free to buy an Android phone! I’m delighted that Apple’s developer costs provide the revenue required to maintain support for my investment in Apple hardware.
I just fired up my wife’s old HTC U11 as I needed a spare phone for a project. Bought in 2018, it is abandoned now. No OS updates beyond Android 9. Hardly usable. Totally insecure. By contrast, my iPhone XS bought the same year is still usable, still receiving software updates, still a valuable tool.
As an aside, the U11 also now needs a replacement USB C port. I’ve never had a Lightning port fail. Standardisation is lowest common denominator for no benefit at all.
That is what the “Apple tax” is paying for. That’s what those who seek to unpick Apple’s position don’t seem to grasp. I’m not a victim, nor are most Apple phone users; we choose to buy into an ecosystem that rewards us with long-term support, continuing access to apps, and a great ROI.
All that support costs money. I want Apple to be profitable supporting my hardware purchase, because the alternative is designed-in obsolescence to force me to buy new hardware.
I’m not against freedom. I run MacOS & various flavours of Linux on desktops precisely so that I can have the freedom to write, download, compile and run whatever I like.
I just wish there wasn’t this incessant urge to “save” people from freely-made choices. Let me buy into a walled garden if I wish, so long as I do it knowingly.
In a class action lawsuit against VG it was stated that VG severed the relationship with Scaled after the test flight crash, and that “Scaled Composites never provided The Spaceship Company with “accurate or reliable engineering drawings” for either the carrier aircraft or Unity.”
https://casetext.com/case/kusnier-v-virgin-galactic-holdings-inc
“It's virtually impossible within the EU to strip someone of their citzenship once granted, unless malice aforethough, fraud, etc. can be demonstrated.”
That’s simply not true. Never mind Brexit; the many cases of UK & other citizens stripped of citizenship show otherwise. Including citizens from birth.
Some of us don’t believe the EU ruling is a positive. Browser choice, for instance, gives me in round terms nothing I want or need beyond potential interoperability issues. As a developer, being able to target a single browser engine for all iOS users is a tremendous benefit, not an issue, delivering great gains for users. The relative success of iOS and Android in the app space suggests to me that Apple’s strategy has delivered enormous gains for all parties. Degrading the Apple experience to match Android’s is hardly progress in my view!
Back in the day, I believed Apple should have bought SGI out of its first Chapter 11.
The problem with 3D is there’s been no money in it for Apple up to now. When SGI allowed their best talent to walk out the door to Nvidia, rather than actually becoming Nvidia, the die was cast - the big money in 3D was going to belong to the graphics hardware people. Which is why Nvidia fell out with Apple - they believed Apple needed them so badly as to such up a large bunch of failed hardware costs.
Apple sells systems and ecosystems. It is usually prepared to back those to the hilt to the degree necessary to continue selling. And as the old Mac Pro showed, Apple has limited success with a “build it and they will come” approach to graphics. As a result I’m actually optimistic about Vision Pro - even if only because an ability to work anywhere on a virtual multi monitor setup, to set up your workspace as you like it, to take that with you, and so on is just very very appealing.
As for porn, does Vision Pro only work with its own speakers, or can it happily integrate with AirPods? ;)
How does the firm invoke the Law Enforcement exemption? They’re not processing data as agents of foreign law enforcement agencies. They are processing data as a private company, that then (for now) offers services only to foreign (and maybe domestic) law enforcement agencies.
The database doesn’t “belong” to those foreign law enforcement agencies.
Did the ICO have especially poor lawyers on this one?
Whilst this may well have been true, if they can find more actionable acts by Lynch and co, they get to play liability top trumps: “I may have been stupid, but my stupidity wouldn’t have caught me out if it hadn’t been for those over-inflated statements you made.”
*If* Lynch is guilty, his downfall was seemingly to be too gung-ho with his pitch. If he’d referred all due diligence questions to Autonomy’s lawyers and auditors, would he still be in the dock?
It doesn’t matter whether you like it or not; the law already exists :)
Perhaps retailers might start buying insurance to protect themselves, and/or insisting manufacturers do likewise.
Product liability isn’t a new concept. But tech sometimes just likes to hide behind a “software isn’t guaranteed to be bug-free” line somewhere & we’ve all-so-readily bought into the idea.
This seems a sure-fire way to kill the golden goose.
It will also potentially kill off free software updates - if you're a device maker, there's going to be a strong temptation to move to a services / software revenue base, which means selling the hardware more cheaply but charging for necessary software updates.
One has to hope this is just noise intended to talk up the values of the shares.
Why have your app sold on 10 stores when right now you can have it sold on 1 store and cover the whole market?
Do you seriously believe the extra effort to be listed on 10 stores will offset the slight reduction in commission payable? Or that users won't simply accept cheaper apps (meaning the same or less revenues for developers)?
The Apple App Store has been one of the standout successes of development in the last 10 years, exposing small developers' wares on a broadly equal footing to a global audience in a way simply not feasibly possible at any time in the past without enormous resources and obscene marketing budgets.
As other shave mentioned, the *only* people who will win from this ruling are potential store operators at scale (e.g. Epic); it is a lose-lose for almost everybody else.
The article questions whether new fabs are needed.
Given the latest well-sourced predictions of China invading Taiwan (and the very likely major sanctions and supply chain shocks likely to result), there seems to be a very real supply chain risk to *not* having new fabs brought on-line outside of China's sphere of influence.
How is that otherwise-intelligent people post this stuff?
Do you seriously think Apple would keep supporting phones for as many years as they do, if they weren't making app store revenue to pay for that? The app store model is a huge win for consumers, and has revolutionised the devices in our hands.
Otherwise, they need to increase handset churn significantly - which means fewer updates, shorter support, and so on. Just, in fact, like the major Android vendors who have no skin in the game of long tail consumer revenues.
And never mind device stability - we really don't want Windows on our phones. Who's going to support those?
Developers love to moan, but, really, where was the revenue model before the Apple app store came along? And where would it be without a well-supported base of phones with a current OS?
iOS was responsible for 63% of total app revenue in 2021, despite only 15% of the installed base. That's what the ecosytem delivers for developers - a huge addressable market of well-supported devices with a stable development target.
The only logical result of this idiotic destruction in the name of principle is a race to the bottom - worse phones, worse software, worse support, shorter lifetimes, and so on. 5-6 years of support with the latest OS is great (not just patches to an old OS).
Customers already have plenty of free choice. They can choose not to buy an Apple device. They can choose not to buy an Android device from a major manufacturer (with customise software and few updates). They can side-load apps onto Android devices. There's just no evidence to support the idea that customers are genuinely harmed - as opposed to a few zealots wanting something Apple don't want to sell to them (their company, their rules).
Surely nobody seriously believes there'd still be $83bn to share out for iOS developers if we fragment to a dozen competing app stores, do they? Has nobody got a proper long-run view of history?
Optane would have revolutionised the workstation space in the 1990s. At a time when we were experimenting with writing code into FPGAs to get orders-of-magnitude speed gains, running with persistent primary storage could have been a phenomenal additional tool.
Ironically the place that Optane might score in the modern world could be in things like phones - modern devices just don't boot fast enough - they're still booting devices, not instant-on appliances. In fact, a whole class of embedded devices could operate this way and, by doing so, be powered-up just when needed and then put immediately back into a zero-power state.
A *very* long time ago now, we set up a test implementation of Citrix running over ADSL in North London. We were pitching the idea to VIdeo Networks, who later became HomeChoice, the grand-daddy of all the modern streaming services. So we had the servers running at Staples Corner and the user terminal in a house a few miles away.
The plan was to offer customers remote desktop sessions on a fully managed high-spec PC instance for a small monthly fee, along with streaming gaming. It worked really well. The thin client hardware was cheap and required effectively no maintenance, the terminal and monitor could be upgraded every few years within the subscription, we could provide limitless data backup, disaster recovery, anti-virus, burstable performance, and so on.
We were just far, far, too early to the party - by at least 15 years. So were VNL / HomeChoice. But we weren't alone - Apple and Oracle went on to spend many orders of magnitude more than we did trying out "network computers" before reaching the same conclusions.
As the old saying goes: never be a pioneer, as the earliest Christian encounters the hungriest lion...
But in the context of the OP's problem, latency via satellite would have been a killer. Customers really don't get on well with their mouse inputs lagging, delays whilst scrolling, etc.
The problem I have is the asymmetry here. Were Lynch to be American, and HP a UK company, it is beyond belief that Lynch would be extradited to the UK to face trial for acts committed on US soil.
The US, IIRC, is relying upon its catch all "wire fraud" statutes, coupled with this idea that any offence alleged to be committed using US dollars is inherently of US jurisdiction, both of which are tenuous at best.
cf the Natwest Three, extradited to the US and found guilty of committing offences whilst in the UK, offences which were not in fact offences at the time in the UK.
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