Posts by WatAWorld

Dell's reasons to be fearful (1,2,3): Intel chip supplies, trade tariffs and slowing server sales in sagging Chinese economy

US company worried about Chinese market?

US company worried about Chinese market?

Once Trump, Pompeo, and John Bolton are done with things, no American company will ever again have to worry about the Chinese market. Maybe not even the Indian market.

My concern is that the logical conclusion of current national security issues is that they'll all be Huawei'd out of China.

The USA has genuine concerns about Huawei being based in China, the exact same concerns any foreign country should have about a supplier based in a foreign military power.

And -- surprise -- to the rest of the world, the USA is a foreign military power.

Sadly, since the fears are valid, I do not see a solution. I only mention it because we're talking about future stock prices of a US company that depends on exports.

As the UK updates its .eu Brexit advice yet again, an alternative hovers into view

What about people outside the current EU that don't have offices in the EU with .eu domains?

That is why this is all alarmist crap.

Domain names aren't going anywhere until registration renewal time.

Anyone who doesn't have a continental-based office, or relative willing to share their continental EU postal mailing address with them for the purposes of registration can get a lawyer to set that up for them via a dummy company with a continental postal mailing address.

Or you can do what we generally do in Canada and use .COM.

.CA it exists, but few Canadian companies use it.

Mostly .CA gets used by US companies with Canadian subsidiaries. (Technically it will be the Canadian subsidiary using it.)

Actual Canadian-based companies generally use .COM if they can afford it, and sometimes .COM with auto-redirects from .CA and .ORG, to protect their brand.

Prepare yourselves for Windows 10 May-hem. Or is it June, no, July?

Re: I'm puzzled.

Can't I retain my last working version of Windows and live with it ?

Yes that what you do. You just keep running the last version that works.

The problems with that are:

1. That last working version will not receive security updates. So as time goes by it eventually becomes more likely to get hacked over the web.

2. The people who make the software you run under your Windows (accounting, CAD, whatever) will eventually stop supporting your old version of Windows.

3. MS is not the only company that does support 15 y/o hardware.

The electronics are only going to run for so long anyways. Once your CPU is 15 years old, and your chipset is 15 years old, your HDD is 15 years old, the hard is going to conk out anyways.

My home PC hasn’t even offered me the much feared 1809 yet so they can’t be in too much of a hurry to bring everyone up to date. Just about to install it via the update assistant because it’s Friday and what else am I meant to do?

OMG, no!!!

Don't ever be in a rush to apply an update you do not really really need to do something.

If the update is being delayed it is probably because Windows Update detected an incompatibility. Wait until the update is offered.

If you are really getting desperate, you start googling with search terms like 1809 and the version of your CPU, the version of your video card, any unusual software you have. Try to see what the specific issue is and go from there.

Re: Such vitriol for something that costs virtually nothing...

I have had some really odd issues with the company supplied Windows laptop that cost me about 4 hours of downtime trying get it work right recently;

Compare that unexpected downtime to the routing time required to install or update Linux and the add-ons your require to it to make it useful.

Or the typical impossibility of installing MacOS.

Yes, Windows is not totally free, but:

1. The data you send MS from Windows itself is not exploited to enhance advertising revenue like the data sent to Google from Android is.

2. The person-hours spent servicing it is not more, or much more, than the hours spent servicing a Linux system with a similar fleshed out add-ons.

3. You aren't stuck with old hardware on your new system's day one like you are with MacOS.

However, I really do wish the Linux folks would look at why their consumer and SOHO market share is so dismal. How much work could it really require to pass Windows??? Instead they spend their time complaining about how all their potential customers are idiots for running a competitor's product. They're stuck in a losing strategy. Plus their insulting the very people they want as customers.

Linux, the operating so good they have trouble giving it away for free.

Seriously, Linux people need to look long and hard at why we aren't all running Linux if it is technically so great and easy to use.

Knocking the competition at every chance just is not a viable marketing plan. Figure out what is wrong with your marketing and fix it.

Re: "in the hands of testers"

"in the hands of testers"

Erm, sorry, you may have meant the members of the insider program I think ;)

We wish they only did their testing on members of the insider program. I pray that one day, one bright and sunny day, that wish will come true.

Greatly appreciate it if people could refrain from trying to rush the job

Greatly appreciate it if people (i.e. journalists and hobbyists) could refrain from trying to rush the Windows 10 2019H1 update.

The mass of us have harassed the heck out of MS and called for heads to roll over their recent poorly developed, poorly tested, rushed and botched updates.

This time they're at least trying to do the job properly.

Let's not confuse them. It matters not at all if their update comes in May, June or July this year -- or even May, June or July next year. Most of the useful changes are probably invisible and behind the scenes internal changes.

The changes visible to the users will probably be degradations to UIs, to make them harder for older eyes and for the differently abled to see. And they laters those land the better.

So please, please, please, do not say anything to MS that might make them think they should hurry up and go faster.

Reliability is many dozens of times more important that what month, year, or epoch the update lands in.

Cheers.

(If they botch another one, the entire upper 8 ranks of MS management should be seconded to work in Beijing during smog season for 10 years, at Chinese pay rates.)

Stop us if you've heard this one: IBM sued after axing older staff, this time over 'denying' them their legal rights

People joining IBM, do you seriously think you'll never be over 40 ???

Why would anyone with a triple digit IQ go to work at IBM?

One day you'll be over 40 and nobody will want you because you were stupid enough to work there for over 10 years.

It's coooming: Windows 10 October 2018 Update adoption slows ahead of the next release

It is perfectly acceptable that most customers don't understand what the changes in the change list. All it means is most users are end users, not programmers or system integrators. Which is how it should be.

If your product is so hard to use that users need to understand about internal bugs, what module is affected, and so on, then your product is not ready for retail sale.

What overwhelmingly matters most, is the update be bug free before general release

It doesn't matter to real end users if 19H1 goes in in February 2020. I doubt real end users will notice anything in it they even value, just a few apps given blander, more boring, and harder to read user interfaces.

It doesn't matter if there are seven dozen more fast ring and two dozen more slow ring versions. Test version are for testing.

Anyone upset about bugs in testing doesn't understand the concept. The concept is to keep testing until the bugs appear to be gone.

It doesn't even matter is eight pre-release test versions are recalled. That is why there is pre-release instead of just release.

I expect the important improvements are all behind the scenes anyways, apart from a few new tools and apps for groupies and enthusiasts.

All that really matters is not causing problems. If MS puts out any more production update (aka general release update) of Windows 10 with problems people are going to be thinking Satya Nadella is taking kick-backs from Linus Torvalds.

What matters most, what overwhelmingly matters most is get the update correctly built and tested before releasing it to general users. Anyone who thinks different is living in a bubble.

IF MS screws up another release heads are going to have to roll or barely anyone is going to trust 19H2 or 20H1.

Burn an offering and backup your system cuz Windows 10 19H1 might actually arrive for spring

I don't care if it is on-time or 6 months late. What I care about is that it not screw up.

I don't care if it is on-time or 6 months late. What I care about is that it not screw anything up.

In hilariously petulant move, Apple shuts Texas stores and reopens them few miles down the road – for patent reasons

Hilarious, yeah.

"It doesn't. Patent experts say it is just as likely that the Western District – which is where the new store will be – will decide against Apple in a future patent case."

You might find some lawyers who claim to be "patent experts" who say that.

However, successful patent attorneys bring their claims to East Texas because successful patent attorneys believe that East Texas is better than any other district in the USA for winning their cases. Ask the guys bringing the claims and winning their cases -- they're the real patent experts.

Nothing petulant about it, it is good business sense and should be copied by others

Nothing petulant about it, it is good business sense and should be copied by others.

Ideally all tech firms would leave East Texas, and then East Texans would stop electing these troll friendly judges.

Why make things easy for East Texans when they're making life miserable for you and your company?

Germany tells America to verpissen off over Huawei 5G cyber-Sicherheitsbedenken

Here is a 2008 article from right here on The Reg about the issue.

Remember that the anti-Huawei rhetoric began before Obama and before 5G. In Canada we started hearing nonstop publicly from US officials back in 2014.

Here is a 2008 article from right here on The Reg about the issue:

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/12/18/huawei_optus_ties_nbn_security_concerns/

Just do a web search on Huawei spying while specifying under Tools before 2012 and you'll see dozens of articles.

On the iPhone, which some think relevant. A list from 2016 of where the components that make up an iPhone are from. Note that the 3 components that list a US company each say "outsourced for manufacturing", which probably means they're made not in the USA, but in one of the countries that still makes electronics components.

Accelerometer: Bosch in Germany. Invensense in the United States.

Audio Chipsets and Codec: Cirrus Logic in the United States (outsourced for manufacturing).

Baseband processor: Qualcomm in the United States (outsourced for manufacturing).

Batteries: Samsung in South Korea. Huizhou Desay Battery in China.

Cameras: Sony in Japan. OmniVision in the United States produces the front-facing FaceTime camera chip but subcontracts TMSC (in Taiwan) for manufacturing.

Chipsets and Processors: Samsung in South Korea and TSMC in Taiwan. Alongside their partner GlobalFoundries in the United States.

Controller Chips: PMC Sierra and Broadcom Corp in the United States (outsourced for manufacturing).

Display: Japan Display and Sharp in Japan. LG Display in South Korea.

DRAM: TSMC in Taiwan. SK Hynix in South Korea.

eCompass: Alps Electric in Japan.

Fingerprint sensor authentication: Authentec makes it in China but outsources it to Taiwan for manufacturing.

Flash memory: Toshiba in Japan and Samsung in South Korea.

Gyroscope: STMicroelectronics in France and Italy.

Inductor coils (audio): TDK in Japan.

Main Chassis Assembly: Foxconn and Pegatron in China.

Mixed-signal chips (such as NFC): NXP in Netherlands.

Plastic Constructions (for the iPhone 5c): Hi-P and Green Point in Singapore.

Radio Frequency Modules: Win Semiconductors (module manufacturers Avago and RF Micro Devices) in Taiwan. Avago technologies and TriQuint Semiconductor in the United States. Qualcomm in the United States for LTE connectivity.

Screen and Glass (for the display): Corning (Gorilla Glass) in the United States. GT Advanced Technologies produces the sapphire crystals in the screens.

Semiconductors: Texas Instruments, Fairchild and Maxim Integrated in the United States.

Touch ID sensor: TSMC and Xintec in Taiwan.

Touchscreen Controller: Broadcom in the United States (outsourced for manufacturing).

Transmitter and Amplification Modules: Skyworks and Qorvo in the United States (outsourced for manufacturing).

It is not as if we won't know for certain US equipment can and will be used to spy on us

It is not as if we won't know for certain US equipment will be used to spy on us. I find it quite easy to assume that under times of stress China and Chinese companies will conduct themselves no better than the USA and American companies.

The question is, do we want one or two countries spying on us and our engineers, academics, industrialists, authors, artists, and governments?

It is a big question.

One part of the big question is who do we most compete with, who is our biggest competition with: the USA or China? I think the USA is a more direct competitor. The USA, Canada, the UK, we do a lot of the same things, provide a lot of the same services.

China mostly markets cheap labour and cheap electronics, Canada and the UK do not sell those things to the world.

When I press submit, this email will go through the web to the USA, from the USA to the UK via undersea cable, and from there to The Reg.

If I was submitting to a French news outlet, it would go through the UK to get to France.

I'm tempted to assume our international telecoms are spied on by a minimum of 3 nations. Being spied on by 3, 4, 5 now anyways, what does it matter if there is one more?

The only protection is end-to-end encryption, and it seems our own government security security agencies, the people who are supposed to be protecting us are busy lobbying to have our end-to-end encryption made insecure and breakable. We, the citizens of our countries, have no defenders.

I'm a crime-fighter, says FamilyTreeDNA boss after being caught giving folks' DNA data to FBI

Re: Shocked

"how about "government run hospitals" and EVERYONE'S blood samples?"

If the FBI had access to that blood they wouldn't need private DNA companies.

Re: Shocked

There was zero proof that DNA FamilyTree was sharing DNA matches with the FBI, up until now.

The situation is the same as with Apple and Google(Android) now as it with FamilyTree DNA before.

Re: Shocked

"No such database exists, at least according to anything they've release about how TouchID works."

And they don't update your iPhone software to force your CPU to run slower after a year or two.

Re: Please read the T&A, don't just check the box.

Ten years ago there was nothing about sharing with the FBI. That is when I did my sample.

TOS change. But the TOS for a purchased service is the TOS at the time the service was purchased.

Re: Proof of ownership?

If you've paid FamilyTreeDNA you've used your credit card, and you're traceable through that.

Assuming you didn't use a stolen credit card.

Re: Proof of ownership?

Criminals do have most rights. But international law allows those rights to be less than for non-criminals.

For example, the right to assembly, the right to freedom of movement, the right to start a family, the right to communicate in private with others. The UN Declaration on Human Rights allows such rights to be suspended for criminals serving their sentence.

But suspects aren't convicts. They're presumed innocent.

And what about the FBI using DNA not for purposes of criminal law, but in its role as the USA's version of MI5, domestic surveillance and counter-espionage. Surveying dissident politicians and peaceful activists, people with peaceful unpopular opinions.

When I get a DNA test done, am I giving permission for my DNA to be used by the FBI (RCMP, MI5, FSB, etc.) to track a relative 50 years from now?

Consider too that historically the FBI has done some political policing too.

Consider too that historically the FBI has done some political policing too.

I'm thinking of all the files they kept on peaceful political dissidents like Martin Luther King. I don't know how much the FBI still does, we won't know for 25 years at least. Hopefully not much, but that might change under different administrations.

It is something to keep in mind.

DNAaaahahaha: Twins' 23andMe, Ancestry, etc genetic tests vary wildly, surprising no one

Re: FDA approved blood glucose meters diabetes depend on for their lives only claim

The original CBC article quoted is here:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/dna-ancestry-kits-twins-marketplace-1.4980976

US National Institutes of Health report on the cost and inaccuracy of human genome sequencing in academic and medical settings

https://www.genome.gov/27565109/the-cost-of-sequencing-a-human-genome/

"Another important driver of the costs associated with generating genome sequences relates to data quality. That quality is heavily dependent upon the average number of times each base in the genome is actually 'read' during the sequencing process.

During the Human Genome Project (HGP), the typical levels of quality considered were: (1) 'draft sequence' (covering ~90% of the genome at ~99.9% accuracy); and (2) 'finished sequence' (covering >95% of the genome at ~99.99% accuracy). Producing truly high-quality 'finished' sequence by this definition is very expensive; of note, the process of 'sequence finishing' is very labor-intensive and is thus associated with high costs.

In fact, most human genome sequences produced today are 'draft sequences' (sometimes above and sometimes below the accuracy defined above)."

FDA approved blood glucose meters diabetes depend on for their lives only claim accuracy +/- 10%.

Testing the services could more accurately have been done by submitting samples from the same person twice than using twins you think are identical.

FDA approved capillary blood glucose meters that diabetes depend on for their lives only claim accuracy +/- 10%.

+/- 10% despite displaying results with a grossly misleading 2 digits.

You can use google to check up on the accuracy of scientific full sequence DNA tests while a bit higher, it omits large stretches of the full sequence it was supposed to analyse.

And "broadly european" includes French, Germany, etc. It is one of those,as precision goes up accuracy goes down. When they use the limited data in their database to try to narrow regions down more the number of times out of 20 they're right drops.

I'm in Canada and I read the CBC result. And I've used 23andMe myself. Yeah, if you ignore all the cautions and want to use the test for something it doesn't claim to be, you're going to be wrong.

But unlike with FDA approved +/- 10% lab test results, nobody dies.

Normally you'd want to repeat a test with suspect results, to see if it was a hard or soft error, to see what went wrong. The CBC did not do that.

I suspect that what went wrong with the 23andMe samples, the ones that had significant errors was that either:

1. One or both samples was contaminate when taken or when opened.

2. One of both samples was damaged in transit, perhaps by high or low temperatures.

3. An old database was used to analyze one sample and a new database used to analyze the other. That could explain the older less specific output.

IBM HR made me lie to US govt, says axed VP in age-discrim legal row: I was ordered to cover up layoffs of older workers

Just think of all those ex-IBMers and the purchasing decisions they make each work day.

At a minimum IBM should be banned from US federal and state contracts for 10 years.

But when the Queen's law fails, good citizens take justice into our own hands.

Just think of all those ex-IBMers and the purchasing decisions they make each work day. And each one legitimately knows many reasons why their employers should be extremely wary of IBM products and services, why those products and services will have lapses in support, be retired early for the convenience and profit of IBM, how bills are jacked up, contracts written in a one-sided manner, etc., etc.

IT is still a new and painfully naive industry. There are reasons why established industries have learned not to turf high performance experienced staff.

Re: Changes staying the same

When a foreign language phrase is used sufficiently in English that it becomes a part of our language its foreign grammar no longer matters.

"The hoi poli". "Hoi" means "the", but you'll see the London Times and everyone use throwing "the" in front of it.

However in this case I suspect you've got the difference between classical French and modern French.

Myself, I prefer to stick to English when I'm writing in English and there are valid English words that describe what I'm saying, as in this case.

That is to day, I avoid being pretentious.

Re: Sued Into Oblivion

For whatever reason Ginny wasn't sacked a decade ago she'll be walking away from this. Probably get a golden handshake with a few tens of millions to boot.

Time flies and you'll be 40 sooner than you think

To people considering working at IBM and those already stuck there: Time flies as you get older. The time from 30 to 40 seems to pass by as quickly as the time from 6 to 21. So you'll be 40 sooner than you think. Kids you want to send to college. Vacations cottages you'd like to buy. Retirement just a blink of an eye off.

Situate yourself properly for your future.

In case you're not already sick of Spectre... Boffins demo Speculator tool for sniffing out data-leaking CPU holes

Making AWS and other IaaS infrastructure untenable is good for selling hardware.

Making AWS and other IaaS infrastructure untenable is good for selling hardware.

It seems to me the motivation is clear.

IBM distributing free software to make CPUs obsolete?

IBM distributing free software to make existing CPUs obsolete? To "encourage" the obsolescence of existing CPUs?

Which corporate mantra does this fulfill: "Customer First" or "IBM First"?

Windows 10 Pro goes Home as Microsoft fires up downgrade server

Re: Just go Linux "Take my Linux ... please!"

I dunno, so many people pay over $100 for MS Windows, and pay hundreds of dollars in premium hardware costs to run MacOS, Linux fanbois can't give their pet OS away for free, and those same fanbois are convinced their pet OS is the best for the wider public.

Some kind of disconnect there.

Maybe you Linuxees need a new marketing slogan:

Paraphrasing Henny Youngman, "Take my Linux ... please!"

www youtube com/watch?v=qUil6T5dN6Y

Better than the current slogan, "Linux, so good we can't give it away for free."

Expecting test versions to not have problems is amateurish.

Expecting test versions to not have problems is amateurish.

If you are going to run test versions of things you've got to expect problems.

The only thing I fault MS for in this is not prominently labeling its test rings as "TEST VERSION" on both the desktop and start menu. This failing by MS allows kids to switch systems they care for over to a test versions, despite that the users may be using it for production.

Dell upping its margins again: Precision 5530 laptop will sting you for $13m. Yep, six zeroes

Dell thinking it could compete with Apple

Potential customers:

1. NHS

2. Military

3. Trust fund kids

4. "Baristas and other creatives"

Supreme Court raises eyebrows at Google's cozy $8.5m legal deal

Kieran, if you and your editor want to start being a credible journalists ...

Kieran, if you want to start being a credible journalist you're going to have to stop spouting stuff that most everyone related to events knows are false.

On this side of the Atlantic we all heard the stuff about Kavanaugh, we all heard how one person making the allegations lied about material facts, and how the other was a crank who'd pulled similar stunts in the past.

None of that has anything remotely to do with this story.

Your just spouting slanderous garbage. And why? To be trendy? To be "provocative"?

Today "being provocative" by saying things you cannot possibly sincerely believe means trolling.

Are you and your editor trolling?

Chinese Super Micro 'spy chip' story gets even more strange as everyone doubles down

Glomar Explorer; Gulf of Tonkin; UFOs and SR71 & F117 test flights; ...

"Faced with such uncertainty, some are reaching for a unifying explanation: that Bloomberg was misled by some in the intelligence community that wish, for their own reasons, to raise the specter of Chinese interference in the global electronics supply chain. Bloomberg could be accurately reporting an intelligence misinformation campaign."

Yes, obviously it is easier for Five Eyes intelligence agencies to thoroughly hack and backdoor stuff totally designed and built within either Five Eyes nations or vassal states. And that is important because you can't infiltrate something by gluing a tiny piece of silicon on it.

Here in Canada we've constantly got the USA trying to tell us to exclude Huawaii from government and private company contracts.

But shouldn't Bloomberg have asked someone at MIT, Stanford, Intel or AMD whether this could function? That a piece of silicon glued to the surface of a circuit board and not connected to conductors could do anything useful?

Bloomberg might well have been duped by the US government, US government's (like probably all national governments) has a long history* of dubbing their press, but an outfit like Bloomberg should have caught it.

* And in the case of the USA, a long officially admitted history. Other countries, especially those on the "other side" don't usually admit things 30 years later.

Re: A Matter of Trust

So you're saying it is a matter of belief and religion.

Do we believe in Bloomberger Infallibility? Are we of the Bloomberg faith?

Pretty much the only electrical engineers and physicists who believe the story are going to be doing so in the face of facts they know. So yeah, I totally agree, it would be a religious belief for them.

To most professional programmers, the thermodynamic, electrical and quantum mechanical stuff going on inside a computer is magic that they just accept. (It would be useless details that get in the way of coding.) So out of ignorance, and not realizing the limitations of their expertise, they might sincerely believe Bloomberg.

"China has repeatedly demonstrated significant skill in industrial espionage. I don't doubt they have the means to pull this off, "

They've demonstrated zero technical skill in creating electronic devices capable of high speed data manipulation without a power source and without connection.

Obviously any technologically advanced country can produce a tiny IC and place it on a circuit board. But just sitting there not connected to anything accomplishes nothing.

The USA has even greater expertise and more practical experience, but they couldn't make a piece of unconnected silicon sitting on a non-conductive area of a PC board hack a system.

Why are ICs always in large packages, how is this dot powered?

It is easy to create an IC smaller than the point of a pencil.

1. Problem #1 is that you need to connect it to power and ground and data buses -- which is why ICs are put into large packages, and why there are circuit board traces leading to them.

2. The dot had neither a windmill nor a solar panel nor a connection to a powerbus, so how is it supposedly powered? Itsy bitsy tiny little nuclear reactor?

And how does it connect to data paths? Psychokinetics?

Simple physics proves that the story has huge errors in its vague technical descriptions and photos.

And with the technical details like power and data connections left out, Bloomberg's story has less than zero credibility.

+++ That said, I do not doubt for a minute that the USA, UK, China, and probably Russia ALL engage in this sort of hardware hacking on a regular basis against key non-governmental targets. +++

(Doubtlessly this sort of spying occurs between governments, but with government targets it is expected. Hopefully no educated person is so arrogant, imperialistic and immoral* that they think their government should be exempted from other governments doing to it what it does to others.

* Accepting others doing to you what you do to others is part of the Lord's Prayer -- the "trespassing part". People living in countries that are truly and sincerely Christian do not claim exceptionalism.

To claim exceptionalism while claiming to be Christian is to lie to yourself and your god.)

Decoding the Chinese Super Micro super spy-chip super-scandal: What do we know – and who is telling the truth?

It is a matter of choice

I see this as a a matter of choice.

Your choices are to be spied on in similar ways by the Americans, the Chinese, or by one of the other big players.

Not being spied on at all is not an option.

Resident evil: Inside a UEFI rootkit used to spy on govts, made by you-know-who (hi, Russia)

We know you'd never present us one made by the USA or UK, so yeah

"Resident evil: Inside a UEFI rootkit used to spy on govts, made by you-know-who (hi, Russia)"

Or China. But never the USA, UK, Canada, Australia or NZ -- not because they don't exist, but you cannot or would not publish it due to our laws.

Top Euro court: UK's former snooping regime breached human rights

Re: So how long until this?

Chekism: where the secret political police strongly control all spheres of society.

If you look at the USA and Russia. If you look at all the ex CIA, KGB and FSB officers working for hedge funds, or in Russia being oligarchs, you can see that those countries already have Chekist regimes.

Why do retired senior US intelligence officials get to keep their top secret security clearances? Why are they entitled to on-going briefing on top secret matters when they're no longer working for the government? It is so they can run business, advice hedge funds, control retirement funds, and control private industry.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chekism

Yeah, as expected. And they knew what they were doing when they broke the law.

Yeah, as expected. And they knew what they were doing when they broke the law.

But they're the government so they won't face prosecution.

The laws we pay them to write and enforce aren't good enough for our civil servants to obey. The laws they write and enforce only apply to us.

Microsoft accidentally let encrypted Windows 10 out into the world

It is an early test version -- only an idiot would install it and not expect problems

It is an early test version -- only an idiot would install it and not expect problems.

Sheesh, 19H1, skip ahead version.

I know, MS should have "test version" superimposed on the Start Menu and Desktop of every Insider version, they don't. But still, after all this time who would not expect an early test version to have serious problems?

It's been 5 years already, let's gawp at Microsoft and Nokia's bloodbath

You could equally say that about France, Germany, Algeria and Argentina

"Finland – a nation most Americans couldn't find on a map before the 1990s. Many probably still can't."

;)

Spies still super upset they can't get at your encrypted comms data

Re: Brexit, anyone?

From my understanding they're dead against Brexit. It will cost them their connection to EU police and intelligence databases.

Paraphrasing

In an official communiqué on the confab, they claim that Russian, Chinese and North Korean inability to access encrypted content risks undermining democratic justice systems, because our the guys working for the Five Eyes can't access it either – and issue a veiled warning to industry.

Yeah, "we" need to be easily spied upon so that we can be safe.

"We" need to be easily hackable so that we can be safe.

"We" being everyone who does not work for a national security agency, and includes our enterprises, our entrepreneurs, our inventers, our lawyers, our politicians, our academics, our physicians, our artists, and our teenage daughters.

The guys at that confab, they're a bunch of chekists.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chekism

Look at the management of US-based hedge funds. They all seem to have ex CIA and ex MI5 on them.

And of course it goes without saying that major businesses in Russia are mostly run by ex KGB, FSB officers (KGB and FSB being the successors to the Cheka). Same in China with their ex MSS officers.

To put it bluntly: How can one be loyal to their country without being loyal to their country's peaceful citizens? Are they not instead being loyal to their agencies and each other?

Hello 'WOS': Windows on Arm now has a price

Re: The market for 25 hour battery life is very limited

You're exactly right there.

It is senseless marketing to focus on over-achieving something that need only be totally acceptable.

A race for low weight is pointless after a sufficiently low weight for the target use is achieved.

A race for thinness is pointless after sufficient thinness is achieved (and may even backfire because it means the victim, er uh, customer need to buy an ugly case to keep it in.

And a race for battery life is pointless after a realistic 18 hours is achieved.

Re: Wipe Windows...

FYI, running Linux on ARM isn't anything new.

But Linux is an operating system that has difficulty finding acceptance when it is given away free.

Shilling for Linux in Windows discussions has been tried many times over the years and it's done nothing to help its acceptance.

Maybe the Linux guys paid people to run it they could get some traction in the mainstream market place? Just a suggestion.

"ubiquitous WIFI" ???

u·biq·ui·tous

yo͞oˈbikwədəs/Submit

adjective

present, appearing, or found everywhere.

Maybe in a few parts of Canada. Toronto and Montreal are mere specks in this great land of ours. And not every coffee shop is part of a chain.

It isn't going to work for you when you're sitting in your car at the side of a road. Or in a client's steel warehouse. It isn't going to work at your cottage. It isn't going to work in a lot of places.

And even when you're in a place where it works, you might be in a place where "high speed" is 100-300 kbps, like North of 60, or in the shadow of a mountain, or any where in Manitoba outside of Winnipeg or Brandon.

Like Chromebooks, these will be useful as "portables" in schools, universities, and offices where they can stay on-premises in an area of known good reliable and fast cell phone or wi-fi coverage.

Which means battery life is immaterial, since they can easily be plugged in.

And weight weight savings below 2 kg won't matter.

Wider use in mainstream Canada will require eliminating the dependence on always being connected. I think that will be readily possible within a 3-4 years.