Posts by sorry, what?

Clue's in the name: Samsung's next Galaxy Note line captures scrawls with responsive stylus then punts them over to a PC

Re: Longevity

... a little unfair. You get three years if you buy the device at launch date, but how many people do that?

Re: Biometrics crap like the S20?

I suffered crap GPS on my S5 Mini, but had perfect GPS on my S7 and great GPS on my S10e. Other S5 Mini users didn't have GPS woes.

My S7 and S10e device biometrics both work(ed) well.

Sounds like you have a duff device and you should get it exchanged.

IDE like an update, please: JetBrains freshens IntelliJ, adds improved GitHub integration, Java support

Microsoft or JetBrains... hmmm... let me think...

Nope. I don't need to. I haven't tried to use VSCode in anger, and only in the context of the Salesforce SFDX plugin, but it stinks. The UX is terrible. I did use Visual Studio for several years and found it rather limited in capabilities. The only IDE that really hits the nail on the head is IDEA. It just works so well, with superb refactoring support and brilliant git integration.

As to the "frustration" of re-indexing mentioned in the article - what? Sure re-indexing can sometimes take a while, but how often are you really switching context on big projects? Switching VCS (read: git) branches, sure, but that takes almost no time at all. I tend to have IDEA open 24/7, occasionally opening additional projects in new windows, but there's always a way to use that "re-indexing" time. Even if it's a quick trip to the "restroom" or to grab a coffee from the kitchen.

What the duck? Bloke keeps getting sent bathtime toys in the post – and Amazon won't say who's responsible

Wasn't decided feather to post a comment...

before it took off in a flurry, or to avoid such fowl use of the forum. As you can seabird, I avian uff pecking puns to post. Nest time I'll flight the temptation. Prey for me.

Only EU can help us, pleads Slack as it slings competition complaint against Microsoft Teams

Slack...

jawed that anyone would use Slack. My experience of it was at least 3 years back, so it may have improved, but at the time it was rubbish. Especially around attachments like images, for example.

That said, I also don't use MS Teams.

Privacy Shield binned after EU court rules transatlantic data protection arrangements 'inadequate'

Re: Standard contractual clauses

Those of us in the UK no longer have such protections anyway, what with Brexit and all. When Google shifted all my data to the US back in April I complained to my MP and got a dismissive bunch of drivel back in return saying that my data was just as secure in the US as it would be in the EU.

Soft press keys for locked-down devs: Three new models of old school 60-key Happy Hacking 'board out next month

Re: Alternatives?

I went for the TeckNet gaming "mechanical feeling" USB wired UK layout keyboard - the key backlights are ridiculous but the typing experience (I'm a dev) is good. At £22 you can buy plenty of these before you've spent the sort of money these keyboards cost... so even if the keys wear out, it'll be years before you regret it from a cost perspective.

Keep it Together, Microsoft: New mode for vid-chat app Teams reminds everyone why Zoom rules the roost

Not puppets...

Muppets. You'd have to be one to use this..

Baby Diesel? Little d'Artagnan? There is another child of Musk in the world

Well, it's obvious to any bloke who ever had to buy smellies for their better half...

White.

'nuf said.

Don't Zoom off elsewhere: Google plugs video-chat service Meet into Gmail as user eyes start wandering

Looking back...

I wish Hangouts could do virtual green screen like Zoom and Teams.

Paranoid Android reboots itself with new Android 10 builds

Wot, no Sammies?

Does Samsung make it too hard to put a custom ROM on their devices? (Just asking - I have no idea!)

Commit to Android codebase suggests Google may strong-arm phone makers into using 'seamless' partitioned updates

I think we need some vendor-agnostic hardware abstraction...

Then the OS can be upgraded without even consulting the hardware vendors - just like Microsoft does with Windows on PCs.

Yeah, I know, not quite entirely aligned with this article, but...

All the vendors would have to do is provide the "drivers" (for want of a better word) and perhaps a partition where they can add their bloatware (to be disabled instantly) and their home screen app.

I'm probably being naive here, but M$ managed it...

Samsung's Galaxy S7 line has had a good run with four years of security updates – but you'll want to trade yours in now

I'd love to see a law...

That means manufacturers are forced to support products for a minimum of 5 years, be that with spare parts or security updates. I'm rather surprised to find that even the EU doesn't appear to have such a requirement.

I know I'm not the typical punter because I pay up front for my phones and I keep them as long as I can. I'm no "oooh, shiny shiny" waste-ard and look to minimize the amount of landfill I generate. It's a shame that Samsung will be forcing a device change on me just so I can benefit from security and other fixes in a product I bought only a few short years back...

The Internet of Things is a security nightmare reveals latest real-world analysis: unencrypted traffic, network crossover, vulnerable OSes

"I do Internet of Things, me"

That self-defining label for anyone using IoT.

Brit brainiacs say they've cracked non-volatile RAM that uses 100 times less power

"Within the next decade we'll either have it or we won't"

No... really?!?

Improved Java support poured into Microsoft's Visual Studio Code – will it be enough to tempt developers?

I don't understand the attraction...

If you're doing serious development, you need a desktop. If you're on a tablet (and therefore unable to use a desktop based IDE) you're not doing serious development. You might review something. You might even do a couple of lines of code to fix something, but you can do that through your cloud-based git repository UI without the need for a browser-based IDE. I simply don't understand the browser-based IDE concept. Unless, I guess, you have a Chromebook. But again, that isn't a serious developer's piece of kit.

As to developing Java - just use the best IDE (IDEA) and be done with it.

Hmmmm. Maybe I'm a fossil, but this seems to be a solution looking for a problem.

Samsung’s aspirational Galaxy Chromebook: Shell out $1k for a fast beaut (and remember to try Linux if you're into that)

And the battery life is...?

Clearly an essential piece of information somehow omitted in this article.

You cannae break the laws of physics, cap'n... Boffins call BS on 'impossible' black hole, fear readings were botched

Don't black holes accrete mass?

If so, surely a small black hole starting at less than 10 solar masses could accrete further mass (e.g. near by stars) and end up in the range 10-100 solar masses?

(Not saying there isn't an issue in this case, but just asking.)

Go champion retires after losing to AI, Richard Nixon deepfake gives a different kind of Moon-landing speech...

Didn't sound at all like Nixon... and I know...

I've listened to loads of what he has to say... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NDTiZoWWvG8

You Look Like a Thing and I Love You: A quirky investigation into why AI does not always work

It's not AI...

it's Machine Learning.

Intelligence implies understanding. "AI", as attested in this article, has no understanding. Therefore it is not "AI". Let's get real, use the correct terminology and stop this Marketeer nonsense please.

ZTE Nubia Z20: It's £499. It's a great phone. Buy it. Or don't. We don't care

Re: Not a Yotaphone

Surely the point of this device is to avoid the notch and have "wall to wall" screen on the main side (and to only need 1 camera on the device while still supporting selfies and video calling)?!

Re: Not a Yotaphone

Not the same thing at all - the Always On display had a noticeable impact on battery life - so much so that I immediately disabled it.

Python overtakes Java to become second-most popular language on GitHub after JavaScript

I wonder...

Could this be being driven by educational use of the language for teaching purposes?

Baffled by bogus charges on your Amazon account? It may be the work of a crook's phantom gadget

How is the device added...?

It seems like you would have to know the username and password to do this. Is that the case?

Flak overflow: Barrage of criticism prompts very public Stack Overflow apology

Re: A pedant writes

Right... and this is a technical forum on stackexchange.com?!

There's reputation then there's reputation...

I regularly use certain Stack Exchange sites, but was entirely oblivious to these goings-on. The article was, therefore, eye opening and I welcome it.

Personally, I see no need or place for pronouns, at least on the sites I use, and (given current ridiculous social norms) feel I should be offended on behalf of people who see pronouns as divisive. But honestly, meh.

In terms of the Stack Overview/Stack Exchange reputation, it has taken a dent but for me it is almost all about user generated content anyway so really is more about the quality of posting than any mutterings from corporate.

Regarding user reputation, as @jglathe said, it is really, really hard work to build reputation on the sites I use. You find old hands with 8+ years up in the 100000s of points and folk who joined more recently (1-3 years) but regularly post down in the really low 1000s even after what is clearly a really concerted attempt to flood the sites with nuggets of their learning and experience. This is, I suspect, simply down to the fact that the old hands were in on the ground floor, answering the "low hanging fruit" questions that naturally gain additional votes over time. In addition, as the sites have matured the questions generally have become more niche (since search engine(s) results cover those earlier questions well) and therefore attract less reputation, which is a shame.

MacOS 'Catalina' 10.15 comes packed with exclusive security fixes – gee, thanks, Apple

Did MacOS just become a web server...?

Could have sworn Catalina was a name for Jakata Tomcat...

Remember the millions of fake net neutrality comments? They weren't as kosher as the FCC made out

Re: Depressing

It's as bad as the American Patents Office.

After 72 hours of recurring outages, you'd be forgiven for wanting to slightly tweak the first syllable of Bitbucket

Re: "tweak the first syllable" - or second?

I think by second they meant:

s/it/itch

Then again, it could be:

s/it/otch

:D

Cloudy with a chance of missed pulls?

What's great about git is that it doesn't really matter if the remote repo becomes unavailable for a while because you've still got all those commits in the local clones. Sure it may take a little while to get yourself out of the bind but it is ultimately doable even if the remote repo can't be recovered at all.

It may be a bit inconvenient to be unable to share updates in a team in the normal way but there are simple ways around this (e.g. using generated patches and the like).

I'm not saying I want downtime from that cloudy git, but actually there's no real chance of missing those pulls or losing commits unless you are a complete noob and delete or mess up your clone.

Haskell, Erlang, and Frank walk into a bar – and begin new project to work in Unison

Re: Making a hash of it...?

1. They are deterministically computed, not random. Yeah, the likelihood is slim but it COULD still happen. If it does, this language is hosed. My point stands.

2. My point is that the original "function" was referenced by one hash and now it has another. I think you are implying that you have to build/deploy all the code again so that the referer code correctly references the bug fixed code, but I'm not sure. That implies you must "own" all the code in the solution since it all has to be re-built and re-deployed to resolve all those references, so don't even think about models like shared libraries, right?

(And why hide behind anonymous posting?)

Making a hash of it...?

A couple of things sprung to mind when reading this (and, no, I haven't gone about finding out any more by reading any of the cited links):

1. How are they going to deal with hash collisions? Hashes are NOT unique identifiers; they are semi-unique at best.

2. How do you ensure that a bug fix, which changes the hash of a function, is correctly applied (updating all reference to the broken function with the new one)?

Yeah, my brain isn't big enough to handle Erlang so I'm guessing it would go "*phut*" in Unison...

We sense a great disturbance in the Salesforce: File-slinging feature breaks down for more than 12 hours

Re: Not to bash Salesforce, but

All of those things can happen for on-prem data and servers. And you have to employ a sys admin to do stuff like backups, configure/update OS and security, handle disk management etc. And you have the risk that your sys admin is happy to drink coffee in the server room, propping the cup on the kvm switch at head height on the pull out tray in your server rack then absent-mindedly pushing the tray back in and causing a coffee coloured waterfall down inside your rack...

Re:not wanting to defend Salesforce, but...

Two years ago I would have said the same thing. Now, having been developing software on the Salesforce platform, I have had to modify my opinion.

There is more to it than simply putting your stuff on someone else's computer. That computer comes with a shed load of software that makes "your stuff" be more and let's you do more with it.

Sure, someone could sell an on-premise version of such software, but (as is suggested by what happened here) it is probably quite complex and difficult to administer and keep up-to-date. That means you probably would not bother to have it and would not be able to do nearly so much with your data.

I still have my concerns about cloud and as a private individual without any real need for clever use of my data, I am more than happy with a personal NAS with RAID to store my files, locked down with no sharing across the public internet.

As a corporate user, however, I can see the value. And I wonder how many outages and the level of cost I would have suffered with my own kit compared with using something like Salesforce.

Au my bog: Bloke, 66, on bail after 'solid-gold' crapper called 'America' stolen from stately home

Re: Graffiti Memories

Some come here to sit and think.

Others come here to sh*t and stink.

That reminds me of some entertaining graffiti...

Seen on the inside of a cubicle door in the library at University of Leeds in the late '80s:

"Caution: turds over 6lbs should be lowered by hand"

World recoils in horror as smartphone maker accused of helping government snoops read encrypted texts, track device whereabouts

Just one problem with this article...

Americans like Trump would read this and miss the sarcasm. El Reg needs to add special tags to sarcastic statements just to ensure that Trump and the Trumpettes don't take it the wrong way and cite the article as more reason to do some further bashing of "not US so not USeful" companies.

Apple is a filthy AWS, Azure, Google reseller, gripe punters: iPhone giant accused of hiding iCloud's real backend

Re: A contract is a contract

There's never a quick buck to be made with Apple from its lawyer drone protected stronghold.

Green search engine Ecosia thinks Google's Android auction stinks, gives bid a hard pass

Users can choose...

But so many Android users fit the "can't be arsed" profile and just use whatever the default default is that this will have no impact.

This screen will generally be ignored by most, with a simple touch on "Next", so strikes me as a way to placate the EU while having almost zero impact on Google - other than to get more readies from third party search engines naive enough to take part in the bids.

Crunch time: It's all fun and video games until you're being pressured into working for free

Do the numbers add up?

An estimated workforce of 50000 and a value of £3bn sets the "sector value" as £60k per worker...

They must pay a lot of their devs a lot less than this. Or there are a lot of part time staff in that 50000 head count.

Or someone's got silvered glass and particulate clouds in spades.

Unpaid overtime, in my experience, is common across all software development and services work. Sure, rarely more than doubling weekly contracted hours for more than a few weeks, but still common.

Politically linked deepfake LinkedIn profile sparks spy fears, Apple cooks up AI transfer tech, and more

Was this an "AI" generated article...

Enticing people to click through to the LinkedIn profiles so the owner(s) of the profiles can find out who in tech is naive enough to access those profiles and therefore give away their identities (assuming they are on LinkedIn, which you need to be to view the profiles from what I can see)?

Idle Computer Science skills are the Devil's playthings

Re: Hire immediately

I recall one of my fellow graduate intake starters doing the same on a company DEC 10 during the lunch break on our second day of training, having just started work, and running it up on every terminal in the terminal room. He was caught. They fired him on the spot.

So, "hire immediately" as long as the developer doesn't continue to do that sort of thing post-hiring!

Apple strips clips of WWDC devs booing that $999 monitor stand from the web using copyright claims. Fear not, you can listen again here...

Re: Palpatine

Absolutely no surprises here whatsoever - all Apple hardware is overpriced. As attested by their company valuation. Money doesn't grow on trees, but is collected via the Apple Tax.

Salesforce? Salesfarce: Cloud giant in multi-hour meltdown after database blunder grants users access to all data

Re: Hang on: what does "all data" mean here?!?

Some of the commentards have been suggesting that "all data" means all the data in the database, which is, of course, multitenanted, hosting data from numerous "orgs" (think of these as virtual servers). My point is - I suspect this isn't the issue but rather that sharing rules have been negated within orgs allowing all users (of those orgs affected) to access data for that org without sharing rules being applied.

While this could be a significant issue, especially if it affected communities on Salesforce, it is far less big a deal than some suggest - the data from one business was probably not exposed to other, unrelated businesses.

Hang on: what does "all data" mean here?!?

Reading between the lines and looking at the supposed "all data" grant, in Salesforce terminology that means all data in YOUR ORG that belongs to YOUR BUSINESS. It doesn't mean all data on the DB across all businesses that share the instance. Can we have some clarifications here please?

Re: Two problems....

While Salesforce does run on Oracle, behind the scenes, it abstracts DB access and has their own profile permissions mechanism. No one (outside Salesforce) has direct access to the DB.

The biggest barrier to AI? It may be the AI companies themselves

Re: I have just two words for this article...

Them are fools.

I have just two words for this article...

Machine Learning.

This isn't AI. Stop being a sheep. Stop following marketing's stupidity. Stop abusing the term AI. We don't have AI. We have nothing close to AI.

The fact that this article has "AI" stamped all over it just gave me a red mist in front of my eyes and I couldn't actually focus enough to take in what it was about.

Americans are just fine with facial recognition technology – as long as they get shorter queues

I wonder if many Americans read Science Fiction?

I found, growing up in a family who were avid SF readers, that my mind was opened to many different possible scenarios set in fictional universes but obviously applicable to reality. That reading made me consider the downsides of technologies and other social changes. And that's why I see pervasive and unfettered use of facial recognition quite disturbing.

These sorts of studies are executed in a vacuum of knowledge; they don't try to influence, but clearly they don't inform either (well, it isn't their job, is it?). I wonder if the same results would be observed if an equal number of serious benefits and major issues/disadvantages were listed before hand?

It sounds (from this reporting) like the skewing in favour of its use seen in the "refined questioning" added only beneficial usages as the scenarios. Obviously, having not seen the detail, I could well be wrong in this assumption. However, if right, that to me makes the study biased and ultimately unhelpful.

The Palm Palm: The Derringer of smartphones

Re: Yes, but...

If you want small, and just something for emergency calling, for less than £20 this looks about right:

https://china-gadgets.com/l8star-bm10-mini-mobile-phone/

That said, it is probably sending lots of (SMS-based) data back to the Chinese secret police.